

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 























































. 



















V 


1 - 


fmutator& E&ttton 


THE WORKS 

OF 


yn 


MRS. GASKELL 


IN EIGHT VOLUMES 

With a General Biographical Introduction, and 
a Critical Introduction to Each Volume. 

BY 

DR. A. W. WARD 

Mister of Peterhouse, Cambridge 

WHO HAS RECEIVED THE KIND ASSISTANCE OP THE 


MISSES GASKELL 


T 



“Mrs. Gaskell has done what neither I nor other female 
writers in France can accomplish — she has written novels 
which excite the deepest interest in men of the world, and 
yet which every girl will be the better for reading.” 


GEORGE SAND. 



(om&y gTc. 


TKnutsforO E&itton 


NORTH AND SOUTH 

• . * « 'i .'• •• 

• \ • "4 \ . 

BY 

MRS. GAS KELL 

.11 


WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

DR. A. W. WARD 

Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge 


NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS 

LONDON: SMITH, ELDER, & CO, 

1906 

Co f \ 


2 


LIBRARY nf CONGRESS 
TwoOopte* Hecdved 

OCT 16 1906 

A Oocynetn . 

OLASS C*^ AXC. NO. 

/ a , f« 


Copyright, iqo6 
by 

G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS 
(For Introduction) 



CONTENTS 


Introduction 



• 

• 

PAGE 

xi 

Preface 

to Original Edition 

• 

. 

• 

• 

xxix 

OHAHTBB 

I. 

“ Haste to the Wedding 

# 


• 

• 

1 

II. 

Roses and Thorns . 

. 


• 

• 

13 

in. 

“ The More Haste the Worse Speed” 

• 

• 

22 

IV. 

Doubts and Difficulties 

. 

• • 

• 

• 

33 

V. 

Decision 

. 

• • 

• 

• 

44 

VI. 

Farewell 





58 

VII. 

New Scenes and Faces . 

. 



• 

65 

vm. 

Home-sickness 

- 



• 

74 

IX. 

Dressing for Tea . 

• 



• 

85 

X. 

Wrought Iron and Gold 

. 



• 

89 

XI. 

First Impressions . 

. 



• 

99 

XII. 

Morning Calls 





. 108 

XIII. 

A Soft Breeze in a Sultry Place 


• 

115 

XIV. 

The Mutiny . 

. 



• 

122 

XV. 

Masters and Men . 

. 




128 

XVI. 

The Shadow of Death . 

• 



• 

146 

XVII. 

What is a Strike ? 

• 


• 

• 

154 

XVIII. 

Likes and Dislikes 



• 

• 

163 


V 


Contents 


CHAPTER 

XIX. 

angel Visits 

. 





. 

PAGE 

173 

XX. 

Men and Gentlemen 

• 





• 

185 

XXI. 

The Dark Night 

• . 




• 

• 

196 

XXII. 

A Blow and its Consequences 



• 

• 

204 

XXIII. 

Mistakes 

• 



• 

• 

• 

220 

XXIV. 

Mistakes cleared up 

• 



• 

• 

• 

228 

XXV. 

Frederick . 

. 



• 

• 


234 

XXVI. 

Mother and Son . 

. 



• 

• 

. 

245 

XXVII. 

Fruit-piece . 

. 



« 

• 

. 

251 

XXVIII. 

Comfort in Sorrow 

. 



• 

• 

. 

258 

XXIX. 

A Kay of Sunshine 

. 



• 

• 

. 

277 

XXX. 

Home at Last 

. 



• 


. 

284 

XXXI. 

“ Should Auld Acquaintance be 

forgot” 


. 

298 

XXXII. 

Mischances . 







309 

XXXIII. 

Peace . 







315 

XXXIV. 

False and True . 

. 



• 

• 

. 

321 

XXXV. 

Expiation 







327 

XXXVI. 

Union not always Strength 


• 


. 

344 

XXXVII. 

Looking South . 

. 





. 

356 

XXXVIII. 

Promises fulfilled 

. 





• 

368 

XXXIX. 

Making Friends . 

. 

• 


• 

• 

• 

383 

XL. 

Out of Tune 

. 

• 


• 

• 

. 

393 

XLI. 

The Journey’s End 

• 

• 


• 

• 

. 

408 

XLII. 

Alone ! Alone I 

. 

• 




. 

421 

XLIII. 

Margaret’s Flittin’ 

. 

• 




. 

434 

XLIV. 

Ease, not Peace 

. 





. 

444 

XLV. 

Not all a Dream 

, 






456 


vi 


Contents 


CHAPTER 

XLYI. 

Once and Now 




PAGE 

. 459 

XL VII. 

Something wanting 




. 480 

XLVlil. 

“ Ne’er to be found again ” 


• 


. 486 

XLIX. 

Breathing Tranquillity 


• 


. 492 

L. 

Changes at Milton 


• 


. 498 

LI. 

Meeting again 


• 


. 509 

LII. 

“ Pack Clouds away ”, 


• 


. 517 


Portrait of the Rev. William Gaskell . . Frontispiece 

From a photograph by Rupert Potter , Esq., taken when 
Mr. Gaskell was staying with him in Scotland. 


vii 



INTRODUCTION 


North and South has always seemed to me, and seems 
to me more than ever after a careful reperusal, one of the 
finest of modem English fictions. Like the great statue 
of the famous Florentine, it was cast, head and foot, in a 
single piece — all the metal flowing in from the same fire. 
Human kindness, the sympathetic sense of contrasts in 
which resides the essence of true humour, and the burning 
passion of love — all these, with much else, contributed 
to the current. And yet, so it chanced, the novel was the 
first which its authoress wrote bit by bit; just as, by a 
curious coincidence, Dickens’ Hard Times , which pre- 
ceded Mrs. Gaskell’s story in the same periodical, and 
which presents other points of contact with its successor, 
was the first story ever brought out by him in weekly 
instalments. It is well known that the inconveniences 
of the experiment, to which Mrs. Gaskell bears testimony 
in the Prefatory Note to the original edition, were, 
according to his wont, stated by Dickens in the most 
emphatic of terms. “The difficulty of the space,” he 
wrote, after a few weeks’ trial, “is crushing. Nobody 
can have an idea of it who has not had an experience of 
patient fiction- writing with some elbow-room always, and 
open places in perspective. In this form, with every 
kind of regard to the current number, there is no such 
thing.” North and South first came out in Household 
Words , where it appeared in the numbers extending 
from September 2, 1854, to January 27, 1855. It was 
first published as a complete work (by Messrs. Chapman 
and Hall), in two volumes, in 1855, and went through 


IX 


Introduction 

many subsequent editions. A French translation of 
it, by Mmes. Loreau and H. de l’Espigne, was published 
in 1859, and, in a second edition, in 1865. 

Although it was Sylvia 's Lovers — a work of iater date 
— which Mrs. Gaskell chose for dedication to her husband, 
he can hardly have taken a deeper interest in any of her 
books than that with which he watched, and furthered, 
the production, first of Mary Barton , and then of North 
and South. Mr. Gaskell ’s heart, like his wife’s, was, as has 
been seen, with the people among whom they dwelt; 
and the best of his remarkable powers were given to his 
ministerial work in Lancashire — the sphere of his life’s 
labours, though not, strictly speaking, his native country. 
As was written of him after his death by one who had 
long looked up to him as a teacher of literature, “much 
as he liked Nature and everything that was beautiful in 
scenery and in art, he was more at home in cities, where 
he could see and study, and love and guide, the men and 
women with whom he came into contact.” He watched 
and noted the thoughts and feelings of the “Darkshire” 
folk as closely as he traced their ways and forms of 
speech. It was in 1854, the year in which the publication 
of North and South opened, that he brought out his two 
Lectures on the Lancashire Dialect , which were in the same 
year appended to the fifth edition of Mary Barton. He 
must at the same time have been pursuing his favourite 
study of German poetry — and hymnology in particular — 
among whose fruits were the translations contributed 
by him to Miss Catherine Winkworth ’s Lyra Germanica , 
of which the first series appeared in 1858. Reminiscences 
of this study seem to have found their way into one or 
two of the mottoes prefixed to the chapters of North and 
South , which are borrowed from Mr. Gaskell’s favourites, 
Riickert, Uhland, and Kosegarten. 


North and South 

In North and South may easily be traced the effects 
of a perfect union of tastes as well as of affections, which 
made the companionship of her husband and daughters 
the greatest happiness of Mrs. Gaskell’s life, and helped 
to mature in her the knowledge of men’s and women’s 
hearts — the supreme gift of the writer who undertakes 
to interpret to others the best, though they may not be 
the least common, experiences of human life. This 
book has much to tell of sorrow and suffering ; and Miss 
Edgeworth, had she lived to criticise it, might have been 
excused for complaining of the number of its death-beds 
— including those of Mrs. Hale and Mr. Hale, Mr. Bell, 
Margaret’s generous guardian, and Bessy, her humble 
friend and admirer. Yet the work is, notwithstanding, 
the product of a happy mind in a happy mood — and at 
times this happiness finds expression in passages radiant 
with beauty, and glorious as testifying to the service 
of Love the Conqueror. Thus the force and charm of 
the personal sentiment with which the story is instinct 
correspond to what may be called its chief purpose 
(since a novel with a purpose it remains) — the endeavor 
to commend reconciliation through sympathy ; and this 
is the solution applied by it to the problems suggested by 
the nature of the plot and the course of the story. 

Most prominent among these problems — though, as 
will be seen, most felicitously mingled and interfused 
with difficulties or contrasts of a wholly uncontroversial 
sort— is the national question as to the relations between 
masters and men, and the whole social condition of the 
manufacturing population, to which, in North and South , 
the authoress of Mary Barton once more addressed 
herself. If she had in the mean time grown older, 
calmer — and why should we not say wiser?— without 
becoming untrue to herself and her noblest instincts, so 


i 


XI 


Introduction 

too the conditions of the national life which affected this 
question had undergone an unmistakable modification. 
During the six years, or thereabouts, which passed 
between the writing of Mary Barton and that of North 
and South , a change had come over the movement for 
advancing and improving the condition of the working 
population, more especially in the manufacturing dis- 
tricts of Lancashire and other parts of the North. 

In the first place, few movements involving the 
interests and affecting the sentiments of large classes of 
the population are able to escape the common fate of 
being followed by periods of reaction. The triumph 
of the agitation against the Com Laws, which went to the 
very root of the sufferings of the working-classes, had 
been complete; and the philanthropic activity of Lord 
Ashley, and those who acted with him, had since his 
return to Parliament in 1847 been chiefly directed to 
matters of a less controversial character than the prac- 
tices of the factories and the pits. Moreover, about this 
time the condition of the Irish population, which went on 
rapidly from worse to worse, had begun to absorb a large 
share of attention and munificence. Finally, the revolu- 
tionary movements, which shook the Contirient of Europe 
in the years 1848 and 1849, though they left England 
virtually unaffected, could not but leave behind them in 
a large part of English society a mingled sense of re- 
pugnance and relief. After the failure of the Char- 
tist demonstration in London of April, 1848, the cause 
which it had intended to advance seemed for many years 
dead in this country; the Chartist conference held in 
Manchester early in 1851 was attended by the representa- 
tives of not more than four localities; nor was it till 1855 
that another attempt was made in the same town to 
revive the agitation. In general, although notwith- 

xii 


North and South 

standing the gradual collapse of the Whig Government 
there was no question of any permanent acceptance by 
the nation of a Conservative policy, still less of any return 
to Protectionist principles, yet a period of compromise 
and tranquillity was at hand in home affairs and internal 
legislation, which covered both the building of the temple 
of peace in 1851 and the opening of the gates of war in 
1854. Finally, it must not be overlooked that in the 
manufacturing districts during these years the employed 
had become more accustomed to, and more expert in, 
the use of their readiest and most effective weapon of 
offence, as well as of defence, against their employers; 
and that strikes (though none seems to have been at- 
tempted on a large scale in Manchester between 1848 and 
1854) were becoming more frequent in the manufacturing 
districts at large. 

The reaction to which the above and other contem- 
porary causes contributed could not but exercise an 
influence upon that group of English writers of prose 
fiction who had shown so genuine and so special an 
interest in the condition of our working-classes; who 
had insisted so strongly on the justice as well as on the 
expediency f of hearing both sides of the questions at 
issue ; and who, whether from a national, a humanitarian, 
or a Christian point of view, had pleaded that justice 
should be done to the needs of the employed not less than 
to the claims of the ’employers, and that masters and 
men should meet each other as friends, not as foes. 

It so happened that early in the year 1854 Dickens and 
Mrs. Gaskell, with whom his literary relations had of late 
been so intimate, each set out upon the composition of a 
story of which the scene was to be laid in the manufac- 
turing districts, and which, under whatever conditions, 
could not fail to address itself to the perennial question 

xiii 


Introduction 

of the relations between capital and labour — or, better 
perhaps, for much is involved in the choice of phrase, 
of the relations between masters and men. Dickens, 
though his wondrous activity of mind, his breadth of 
human sympathy, and his hatred of social injustice, 
could not but excite in him an interest in the manufactur- 
ing districts and their population— to which, as in The 
Chimes and The Old Curiosity Shop , he had already given 
expression more passionate than convincing — possessed 
no intimate knowledge either of the North or of the 
manufacturing classes in general ; indeed, neither his up- 
bringing, nor his experience (except incidentally) — nor 
again, his reading and his tastes — had brought him into 
close contact with this particular class of our population. 
In this year, 1854, when he was revolving the story 
Hard Times , which was (though somewhat late) to pre- 
sent the full deliverance of his mind on the condition of 
our manufacturing districts, he travelled to Preston, 
where at the time there was a strike, to catch what he 
could of the spirit of the conflict, and of its influence 
upon those concerned in it. But he was much disap- 
pointed with what he saw, or rather with what he did 
not see; and, having ascertained that the people “sit at 
home and mope,” went off himself to witness an in- 
different performance of Hamlet at the theatre. 
Even genius cannot satisfactorily report or reproduce 
what it only imperfectly understands. Dickens ’ intuitive 
perception of this truth will not be held to derogate from 
the characteristic candour and generosity of a passage 
in a letter which, four months later, he addressed to 
Mrs. Gaskell, with the general design of whose new 
story he must by this time have become acquainted: 

“I have no intention of striking. The monstrous claims at 
diminution made by a certain class of manufacturers, and the 


xiv 


North and South 

extent to which the way is made easy for working-men to slide 
down into discontent under such hands, are within my scheme; 
but I am not going to strike, so don’t be afraid of me. But I 
wish you would look at the story yourself, and judge where and 
how near I seem to be approaching what you have in your mind. 
The first two months of it will show that.’! 

While, from the nature of the case, the publication of 
the successive portions of Hard Times , which appeared in 
Household Words from April i to August 12. 1854, 
could not have exercised any but a quite incidental 
influence upon the composition of Mrs. Gaskell’s story, 
internal evidence shows the latter to have been written 
in absolute independence of Dickens ’ work. Thus, while 
it would be impertinent to offer here any general criti- 
cism of what can hardly be described as the earlier of the 
two works except by reason of their dates of publication, 
even a comparison between the pair seems superfluous. 
Yet the almost simultaneous treatment, by two eminent 
writers in close mutual touch, of themes which, though 
not identical, in many respects cover each other, is 
something more than a curiosity in literary history, and 
should not be lost sight of by critics desirous of applying 
a comparative treatment. Is it going too far to say 
that in Hard Times Dickens, whose creative power had 
then only just passed its zenith, sought to illustrate 
social conceptions fervently cherished by him by means 
of types drawn only in part from spheres within his own 
intimate knowledge ; while Mrs. Gaskell sought to 
harmonise personal and social contrasts in conditions 
of life that came home to her with an intimate and 
familiar force? However this may have been — and we 
may be sure that no such conclusions were tried by her 
with her great friend — nothing could have been more 
delightful, and nothing more magnanimous, than the 


XV 


Introduction 

spirit in which Dickens applauded every stage in the 
progress of a story which he welcomed as an ornament 
not only to his journal, but to the literature of English 
fiction. As far back as May 3, 1853, when he must 
have been revolving in his mind the first notions of the 
story for which out of a wealth of proposed titles he at 
last selected the name of Hard Times , he wrote to her as 
to the subject, doubtless communicated to him in general 
terms, of her proposed story: 

“ The subject is certainly not too serious, so sensibly treated. I 
have no doubt that you may do a great deal of good by pursuing it 
in Household Words. I thoroughly agree in all you say in your 
note. I have similar reasons for giving it some anxious considera- 
tion, and shall be greatly interested in it. Pray decide to do it. 
I am sure you may rely on being widely understood and sym- 
pathised with.’! 

A month later he had the first portion of the story in 
his hands, and wrote back with cordial warmth: 

“ I have read the MS. you have had the kindness to send me, 
with all possible attention and care. I have shut myself up for 
the purpose, and allowed nothing to divide my thoughts. It 
opens an admirable story, is full of character and power, has a 
strong suspended interest in it (the end of which I don’t in the 
least foresee), and has the very best marks of your hand upon it. 
If I had more to read, I certainly could not have stopped, but 
must have read on.” 

And, in July, when Mrs. Gaskell appears to have con- 
sulted him as to the name of her story, he, instead of pre- 
ferring a title which would have obscured any sugges- 
tion of a competition with his own story, unhesitatingly 
advised: 

“ North and South appears to me to be a better name than 
Margaret Hale. It implies more, and is expressive of the op- 
posite people brought face to face in the story.” 

xvi 


North and South 

And, finally, in January, 1855, when the last instal- 
ment of the story had reached him, he wrote: 

“Let me congratulate you on the conclusion of your story: 
not because it is the end of a task to which you had” [no doubt 
because of the special conditions of publication] “conceived a 
dislike (for I imagine you to have got the better of that delusion 
by this time), but because it is the vigorous and powerful ac- 
complishment of an anxious labour. It seems to me you have 
felt the ground x1 jroughly firm under your feet, and have 
strided on with a force and purpose that must now give you 
pleasure. I shall still look forward to the large sides of paper, 
and shall soon feel disappointed if they don’t begin to reappear.’S 

The scheme (to borrow Dickens’ word) of Mrs. Gas- 
kell’s own story no doubt conformed itself to a wish, 
which may have been only half conscious though at the 
same time most genuine on her part, to find an opportu- 
nity of rectifying whatever misapprehensions might 
have arisen as to the real purpose — for purpose there had 
been — with which she had written Mary Barton. Yet 
her object in sending forth North and South to take its 
place by the side of her early masterpiece was by no 
means, as has been at times loosely suggested, to balance 
her previous advocacy of the claims of one class by 
showing what was to be said in favour of the other. 
Beyond a doubt, she desired to assert her sincere wish 
to be fair to both masters and men; and in North and 
South she succeeded better in the endeavour than she had 
in Mary Barton. The tones of her censor-in-general 
themselves were hushed into accents of the most com- 
placent, if still self-controlled, satisfaction. 

“It is,” wrote Mr. W. R. Greg, “no compliment to say that 
your book has been my constant companion since I saw you; I 
only finished it last night. But I have been in society every day, 
and could only snatch time for a chapter before going to bed at 
night. Last night, however, I was home early and resolved 


XVII 


Introduction 

upon a treat; so sat up till i o’clock, and came to an end, and 
was sorry when I had done it. I find no fault in it, which is a 
great deal for a critic to say, seeing that one inevitably gets the 
habit of reading in a somewhat critical spirit. I do not think 
it as thorough a work of genius as Mary Barton — nor the subject 
as interesting as Ruth — but I like it better than either; and 
you know how, in spite of my indignation, I admired the first. I 
think you have quite taken the right tone, and the spirit and 
execution of the whole is excellent. The characters are all 
distinct, and kept distinct to the last, and the delineation is 
most delicate and just. Now you are, I know, so used to full 
and unmodified eulogy that I daresay my appreciation will appear 
faint, scanty, and grudging. Indeed it is not so; if you knew 
how painfully scrupulous I am (not as a matter of conscience, 
but of insuperable instinct) in matters of praise to keep within 
the truth — you would read more real admiration in my cold 
sentences than in the golden opinions of more demonstrative 
ones.” 

Like her critic, Mrs. Gaskell in North and South had 
no other desire than that of perfect fairness. Once 
more, she accorded the recognition which was its due 
to the heroic element perceptible in the conduct of the 
workmen, when persistently holding out together even 
to the disadvantage of their individual interests — “that ’s 
what folk call fine and honourable in a soldier, and why 
not in a poor weaver chap?” On the other hand, she 
cast no glamour round their unreasonableness in thought 
and in action, and exhibited them as clinging to their 
prejudices even where pernicious to themselves — like 
the men who “didn’t like working in places where there 
was a wheel, because they said as how it made ’em 
hungry, at after they ’d been used to swallowing fluff, 
to go without it, and that their wage ought to be raised 
if they were to work in such places.” In Nicholas 
Higgins she drew to the life the best kind of Lancashire 
operative ; and the pitifulness of the likeness was attested 
by the great engineer Sir William Fairbairn, who knew 

xviii 


North and South 

more than most men of Manchester workshops, and who 
wrote to Mrs. Gaskell: 

“ Poor old Higgins, with his weak consumptive daughter, is a 
true picture of a Manchester man. There are many like him in 
this town, and a better sample of independent industry you 
could not have hit upon. Higgins is an excellent representative 
of a Lancashire operative — strictly independent — and is one of 
the best characters in the piece. ” 

But she depicted with no less force and fidelity the 
fanaticism of unreason in the personage of Higgins’ 
bete noire , the unlucky Boucher — whose folly, dealing 
destruction to his nearest and dearest as well as to 
himself, his comrade was to requite by a self-sacrificing 
care for the suicide’s widow and children. 

But the companion picture to that of the working-man 
typical of the best characteristics of his class — the 
picture of a master who, with the roots of his own 
strength in his native ground, aware of his power and 
jealous of all interference with its legitimate exercise, 
yet comes gradually to realise the whole of his duty 
towards his workmen — this was for the first time de- 
liberately essayed by Mrs. Gaskell in North and South. 
In her first novel old Mr. Carson is, towards the end of 
his career, brought to an insight into the significance of 
all that remains to be done in order to humanise the 
personal relations between employer and employed. In 
North and South the whole course of the story, whose 
most dramatic scene has shown the master and his men 
face to face in all but internecine conflict, makes us 
understand how its hero, Mr. Thornton, a man of true 
Lancashire metal, possessed of a firm will, a clear head, 
and a true heart, gradually finds for himself the true 
solution of a problem of which he has come to understand 
the conditions in their entirety. The intuition of 


XIX 


Introduction 

Margaret, his soul’s love, has from the first, in the 
midst of her ignorance, insisted upon this solution. 
Through her Mr. Thornton comes to know Higgins; 
through Higgins his fellow- workmen ; and in the end the 
simple and self-evident conclusion, “God has made us so 
that we must be mutually dependent,” is acknowledged 
true on both sides; and we may look forward to this 
recognition bringing forth fruit, though not always in 
the same amplitude — “some an hundred-fold, some 
sixty-fold, some thirty-fold.” 

At the same time — and the process illustrates the 
wonderful evolutionary force proper to the ideas of a 
really creative imagination — the theme of Mary Barton , 
thus enlarged and expanded into that of North and 
South, in the latter novel advances into a quite new 
phase.* “The antagonism,” it has been well said by a 
critic whom I make no apology for quoting once more,f 
“of which we are here called upon to take note, is not 
so much the antagonism of capital and labour, as that 
between ancient and modem civilisations. The agri- 
cultural, patriarchal, easy-going, idyllic South is opposed 
to the feverish energy and severe austerity of the North. 
We have here a profound contrast, which has become 
an essential part of English life, and a theme fertile 
in developments — -moral, artistic, and economic. Mrs. 
Gaskell deserves credit for having so clearly seized and 

* It is curious, by the way, that a celebrated authoress, who 
some years earlier had treated the theme of North and South to a 
very different purpose, should have taken so strong an interest 
in Mrs. Gaskell’s book. In 1853, Mrs. Beecher Stowe had been 
staying at Plymouth Grove, and in May, 1856, she wrote to ex- 
press her warm thanks, and those of her daughters, for a story 
they had all read “with so much enthusiasm.’’ 

f M. Cazamian, u.s., p. 408. 


XX 


North and South 

so subtly delineated certain aspects at all events of this 
antithesis.’’ And, it may be added, she contrives with 
admirable skill to do justice to both parts of the picture, 
and to show the weak spots in the social life of both 
Northerners and Southrons — town folk and country folk. 
The ways of the manufacturing districts of the North are, 
as might be expected, described with a kindly truthfulness 
with which the most susceptible sensibility could hardly 
find fault, even though time may have softened some of 
the colours, or cast some varied hues over the char- 
acteristically colourless background of the picture. A 
single chapter (“ Looking South ”) suffices to remind us 
how the simple life of the southern village, as well as the 
more complicated life of the busy northern town, has 
not only its shortcomings, but its trials and temptations. 
And, ultimately, Margaret, the refined and ardent 
heroine of the tale, after she has in spite of herself learnt 
to understand the truth and tenderness that light up the 
darkness of the North, has only to revisit the southern 
home, in comparison with which every other spot once 
seemed to her hard and prosaic-looking, in order, even 
in its “old enchanting atmosphere,” to see clearly and 
judge justly. 

The distinguished French critic just cited by me con- 
jectures that Mrs. Gaskell “put a good deal of her heart ” 
into the contrast which in North and South, she endeav- 
oured to depict — a contrast which no true painter of Eng- 
lish life, from Chaucer to Dickens, has failed to introduce 
into his pictures. M. Cazamian can hardly be wrong in 
asserting that “the days of her childhood and youth at 
Knutsford, and her schooltime at Stratford-on-Avon, had 
familiarised her with the irresistible attractions of 
English country-life.” But his logical conclusion that, 
“suddenly transplanted, she might very well have felt 

xxi 


Introduction 

all the repugnance which Manchester excites,” is rather 
of the “high priori ” kind. It ignores one of the most 
characteristic of her gifts — a saving gift, one might 
almost call it — which she owed, partly to the varied 
personal experience of her earlier life (not all of which 
was spent among green hedgerows and in “ministers’ 
gardens”), but chiefly to the swiftness of her imaginative 
powers and to the serene catholicity of her humour. 
Thus she could at all times enter, not only quickly but 
fully, into quite different and mutually contrasting as- 
pects of life and its surroundings ; and I cannot imagine 
her at any time to have had to do battle in her own mind 
with those prejudices which to Margaret Hale were the 
source, at first of so much pride, and then of so much 
anguish. Thus North and South , among its many 
distinctive merits, possesses that of a fairness of judg- 
ment which is the result, not of balanced antipathies, but 
of a most comprehensive sympathy. The personal 
reminiscences in the book are, to all seeming, few and 
far between. In Mr. Hale, the high-minded clergyman 
who, irresolute in small things, relinquishes his living and 
his clerical work for conscience’ sake, there may be (as 
has been suggested) distinguishable some features of 
Mrs. Gaskell’s father, William Stevenson, in his relations 
to the religious ministry. And the character and ex- 
periences of Frederick, the exiled “first-born child,” for 
whom his poor dying mother yearns with all the strength 
of her weakness, may in some measure, like those of Peter 
in Cranford , have been suggested by the mysterious 
story of John Stevenson, Mrs. Gaskell’s own brother. 
But the figure of Frederick is of secondary importance 
only; and, in the eyes of most readers, good Mr. Hale’s 
religious difficulties are likely to occupy a less prominent 
place in the story than they perhaps did in the design of 

xxii 


North and South 

Mrs. Gaskell, and certainly in the judgment of Charlotte 
Bronte. Writing, presumably, of the fine chapter in 
which Mr. Hale announces his decision to his daughter, 
that staunch conservative Churchwoman says in a letter 
to her friend : 

“The subject seems to me difficult; at first I groaned over it; 
if you had any narrowness of views or bitterness of feeling 
towards the Church or her clergy, I should groan over it still; 
but I think I see the ground you are about to take as far as the 
Church is concerned’ not that of attack on her, but of defence 
of those who conscientiously differ from her, and feel it a duty to 
leave her fold. Well — it is good ground, but still rugged for the 
step of fiction. Stony — thorny will it prove at times, I fear.” 

Since Mr. Hale’s time, it should be remembered, some 
of the outward obstacles to such a course as that pursued 
by him have been removed; and, with the growth of a 
tolerance which is not due to indifference only, has 
grown an unwillingness to interfere, even by a comment 
which would sometimes not be wholly unwelcome, 
between a sincere thinker and his conclusions. 

The construction of North and South may in my 
judgment be rightly described as almost faultless. There 
is not an incident in the story which does not bear upon 
its progress. There is no dissipation of interest; and the 
attention of the reader is kept throughout in perfect sus- 
pense. Dickens, it will be remembered, could not “in 
the least foresee the ending” of the plot. This ending 
is most admirably devised, though exception might per- 
haps be taken with a detail or two in the way which is 
found for Mr. Thornton out of his final difficulties. The 
action at large is carried on among a group of characters, 
all of which are kept perfectly distinct from one another, 
and are at the same time thoroughly interesting in 
themselves. I have already touched on the admirable 
delineations of the working-men, and of Bessy Higgins, 

xxiii 


Introduction 

with her spiritual yearnings for a peace which is not of 
this world, and her human love of change for the sake of 
change — so that she can ever find an excuse for her 
father’s lapses into drinking. At the other end of the 
social scale are the Lennoxes and Aunt Shaw — the 
shadows of a season, cheerfully limited and entirely 
contented with their limitations. Of them Henry 
Lennox, Margaret’s first lover, is a subtle variety — 
clever enough for anything, except for an insight into 
his own fatal limitation — self. 

About Margaret, whom there are few heroines to equal 
in fiction — in that of our own times Ethel Newcome 
alone deserves to rank beside her — there is a quite ex- 
traordinary charm; and the transformation in her on 
which the story turns is worked out with equal power and 
delicacy. One can almost see her, as poor Bessy saw 
her in a dream, “coming swiftly towards me, wi’ yo’r 
hair blown back wi’ the very swiftness o’ the motion, a 
little standing off like ; and the white 'shining dress on 
yo’ve getten to wear’’; or in the moment of anguish, 
confronted with her real lover and his. passion, “her 
head, for all its drooping eyes, thrown a little back, in 
the old proud attitude.” If, after the arrival of the 
Hales at Milton, Margaret’s prejudice against “trades- 
men” is a little overdone, though the talk about “ gentle- 
men” is perfectly natural, there is not a false tone or a 
wrong colour at any subsequent stage of the story of the 
long assay. And thus at the end, after all has seemed 
over, and she and her poor heart have, in the words — • 
surely of St. Francois de Sales — read by her, found their 
only refuge in humble submission to the Divine mercy, 
she is vouchsafed the supreme earthly happiness of 
learning that the love concealed in that heart is returned. 

The character of Thornton, whose nature is the com- 


XXIV 


North and South 

plement of Margaret’s, is drawn with no less force and 
consistency. “I belong to Teutonic blood,” he says; 
“ it is little mingled in this part of England to what it is 
in others: we retain much of their language; we retain 
more of their spirit ; we do not look upon life as a time 
for enjoyment, but as a time for action and exertion. 
Our glory and our beauty arise out of our inward strength, 
which makes us victorious over material resistance, and 
over greater difficulties still.” He is an admirable type 
of the best of the Lancashire master manufacturers of his 
day: upholding the principle of independence for both 
masters and men; hating Parliamentary or other State 
interference ; and very much averse from giving reasons 
where he claims a right to give orders. But in the story 
he interests us for something beyond his views of industry 
or of life, and besides the action into which he unhesitat- 
ingly translates those views. It would be difficult to 
find in fiction an equally simple and true picture of a 
strong man under the spell of a great passion — a passion 
worthy of himself. 

These two great figures stand in an environment 
which partly enables us to understand them both, partly 
accentuates particular sides of the contrasts which are 
harmonised between hero and heroine. Mrs. Thornton 
is effective on the whole, but in her austerity, a trifle 
Dickensian — or may one venture to say, stagey? When 
Margaret refuses her son, this rather alarming mother- 
in-law in posse “ showed her teeth like a dog for the whole 
length of her mouth ” ; and when she in her turn reproves 
the young “foreigner” with supposed levity of conduct, 
she describes her son as “this Milton manufacturer, his 
great heart scorned as it was scorned.” The truth is 
that the mothers of self-made men, and sometimes of 
other persons of importance, have almost as hard a time of 

XXV 


Introduction 

it in fiction as some of them have in real life. Mr. Hale, 
as has already been said, belongs to his times, and is a 
very attractive example of them — more so perhaps than 
the excellent Mr. Bell, who with his common-room wit 
and his bottle of port for luncheon, would have shocked 
the more delicate idiosyncrasies of even the contem- 
poraries of Robert Elsmere. But how lifelike and 
clear-cut every one of these figures is, including that of 
Mrs. Hale’s own maid, Dixon, a perfectly new variety 
in Mrs. Gaskell’s exquisite collection of serving- women — 
aristocratic in her tastes, vulgar in her soul, rising quite 
superior to her unlucky master’s theological scruples, 
but not above edifying the listening Milton maid-of-all 
work by her talk about the Harley Street establishment 
— and true of heart withal! 

The success of North and South was unequivocal. 
While, owing to the very fact of its fairness of spirit and 
evenness of judgment, it was the last sort of book to 
create what is called a sensation, it was destined to 
become a favourite of all classes, and of many generations, 
and is unlikely to lose the hold it has gained over the 
lovers of the best kind of fiction. For the commanding 
interest of this inimitable story is truly human ; and no 
art could be more triumphant than that with which its 
varied contrasts are harmonised, and its central conflict 
is ended. 


xxvi 


PREFACE TO ORIGINAL EDITION 


On its first appearance in Household Words, this tale 
was obliged to conform to the conditions imposed by the 
requirements of a weekly publication, and likewise to con- 
fine itself within certain advertised limits, in order that 
faith might be kept with the public. Although these 
conditions were made as light as they well could be, the 
author found it impossible to develop the story in the 
manner originally intended, and, more especially, was 
compelled to hurry on events with an improbable rapidity 
toward the close. In some degree to remedy this ob- 
vious defect, various short passages have been inserted 
and several new chapters added. With this brief 
explanation, the tale is commended to the kindness of 
the reader : 

“Beseking hym lowly, of mercy and pit6, 

Of its rude makyng to have compassion.’! 


XXV11 



NORTH AND SOUTH 


CHAPTER I 

“haste to the wedding” 

“ Wooed and married and a’.” 

“ Edith ! ” said Margaret gently, “ Edith ! ” 

But as Margaret half suspected, Edith had fallen asleep. 
She lay curled up on the sofa in the back drawing-room in 
Harley Street, looking very lovely in her white muslin and 
blue ribbons. If Titania had ever been dressed in white 
muslin and blue ribbons, and had fallen asleep on a crimson 
damask sofa in a back drawing-room, Edith might have been 
taken for her. Margaret was struck afresh by her cousin’s 
beauty. They had grown up together from childhood, and 
all along Edith had been remarked upon by every one, except 
Margaret, for her prettiness ; but Margaret had never thought 
about it until the last few days, when the prospect of soon 
losing her companion seemed to give force to every sweet 
quality and charm which Edith possessed. They had been 
talking about wedding dresses, and wedding ceremonies ; 
and Captain Lennox, and what he had told Edith about her 
future life at Corfu, where his regiment was stationed ; and 
the difficulty of keeping a piano in good tune (a difficulty 
which Edith seemed to consider as one of the most formid- 
able that could befall her in her married life), and what 
gowns she should want in the visits to Scotland, which 
would immediately succeed her marriage ; but the whispered 
tone had latterly become more drowsy ; and Margaret, after 
a pause of a few minutes, found, as she fancied, that, in spite 

I B 


North and South 

of the buzz in the next room, Edith had rolled herself up 
into a soft ball of muslin and ribbon, and silken curls, and 
gone off into a peaceful little after-dinner nap. 

Margaret had been on the point of telling her cousin of 
some of the plans and visions which she entertained as to 
her future life in the country parsonage, where her father 
and mother lived, and where her bright holidays had always 
been passed, though for the last ten years her aunt Shaw’s 
house had been considered as her home. But, in default of 
a listener, she had to brood over the change in her life 
silently as heretofore. It was a happy brooding, although 
tinged with regret at being separated for an indefinite time 
from her gentle aunt and dear cousin. As she thought of 
the delight of filling the important post of only daughter in 
Helstone parsonage, pieces of the conversation out of the 
next room came upon her ears. Her aunt Shaw was talking 
to the five or six ladies who had been dining there, and 
whose husbands were still in the dining-room. They were 
the familiar acquaintances of the house ; neighbours whom 
Mrs. Shaw called friends, because she happened to dine with 
them more frequently than with any other people, and 
because, if she or Edith wanted anything from them, or they 
from her, they did not scruple to make a call at each other’s 
houses before luncheon. These ladies and their husbands 
were invited, in their capacity of friends, to eat a farewell 
dinner in honour of Edith’s approaching marriage. Edith 
had rather objected to this arrangement, for Captain Lennox 
was expected to arrive by a late train this very evening ; but, 
although she was a spoiled child, she was too careless and 
idle to have a very strong will of her own, and gave way 
when she found that her mother had absolutely ordered 
those extra delicacies of the season which are always sup- 
posed to be efficacious against immoderate grief at farewell 
dinners. She contented herself by leaning back in her chair, 
merely playing with the food on her plate, and looking grave 
and absent ; while all around her were enjoying the mots of 
Mr. Grey, the gentleman who always took the bottom of the 


2 


“ Haste to the Wedding ” 

table at Mrs. Shaw’s dinner parties, and asked Edith to give 
them some music in the drawing-room. Mr. Grey was par- 
ticularly agreeable over this farewell dinner, and the gentle- 
men stayed downstairs longer than usual. It was very well 
they did — to judge from the fragments of conversation which 
Margaret overheard. 

“ I suffered too much myself ; not that I was not ex- 
tremely happy with the poor dear General, but still disparity 
of age is a drawback : one that I was resolved Edith should 
not have to encounter. Of course, without any maternal 
partiality, I foresaw that the dear child was likely to marry 
early ; indeed, I had often said that I was sure she would 
be married before she was nineteen. I had quite a prophetic 
feeling when Captain Lennox ” — and here the voice dropped 
into a whisper, but Margaret could easily supply the blank. 
The course of true love in Edith’s case had run remarkably 
smooth. Mrs. Shaw had given way to the presentiment, as 
she expressed it; and had rather urged on the marriage, 
although it was below the expectations which many of 
Edith’s acquaintances had formed for her, a young and 
pretty heiress. But Mrs. Shaw said that her only child 
should marry for love — and sighed emphatically, as if love 
had not been her motive for marrying the General. Mrs. 
Shaw enjoyed the romance of the present engagement rather 
more than her daughter. Not but that Edith was very 
thoroughly and properly in love ; still she would certainly have 
preferred a good house in Belgravia, to all the picturesque- 
ness of the life which Captain Lennox described at Corfu. 
The very parts which made Margaret glow as she listened, 
Edith pretended to shiver and shudder at ; partly for the 
pleasure she had in being coaxed out of her dislike by her 
fond lover, and partly because anything of a gipsy or make- 
shift life was really distasteful to her. Yet had any one 
come with a fine house, and a fine estate, and a fine title to 
boot, Edith would still have clung to Captain Lennox while 
the temptation lasted ; when it was over, it is possible she 
might have had little qualms of ill-concealed regret that 

3 


North and South 

Captain Lennox could not have united in his person every- 
thing that was desirable. In this she was but her mother’s 
child ; who, after deliberately marrying General Shaw with 
no warmer feeling than respect for his character and estab- 
lishment, was constantly, though quietly, bemoaning her 
hard lot in being united to one whom she could not love. 

“ I have spared no expense in her trousseau,” were the 
next words Margaret heard. “ She has all the beautiful 
Indian shawls and scarfs the General gave to me, but which 
I shall never wear again.” 

“ She is a lucky girl,” replied another voice, which 
Margaret knew to be that of Mrs. Gibson, a lady who was 
taking a double interest in the conversation, from the fact of 
one of her daughters having been married within the last 
few weeks. “ Helen had set her heart upon an Indian shawl, 
but really, when I found what an extravagant price was 
asked, I was obliged to refuse her. She will be quite envious 
when she hears of Edith having Indian shawls. What kind 
are they ? Delhi ? with the lovely little borders ? ” 

Margaret heard her aunt’s voice again, but this time it 
was as if she had raised herself up from her half-recumbent 
position, and were looking into the more dimly lighted back 
drawing-room. “Edith! Edith!” cried she; and then she 
sank as if wearied by the exertion. Margaret stepped 
forward. 

“ Edith is asleep, Aunt Shaw. Is it anything I can do ? ” 

All the ladies said “ Poor child ! ” on receiving this dis- 
tressing intelligence about Edith ; and the minute lap-dog in 
Mrs. Shaw’s arms began to bark, as if excited by the burst 
of pity. 

“ Hush, Tiny ! you naughty little girl ! you will waken 
your mistress. It was only to ask Edith if she would tell 
Newton to bring down her shawls ; perhaps you would go, 
Margaret dear ? ” 

Margaret went up into the old nursery at the very top of 
the house, where Newton was busy getting up some laces 
which were required for the wedding. While Newtori went 

4 


^ Haste to the Wedding” 

(not without a muttered grumbling) to undo the shawls, 
which had already been exhibited four or five times that, day, 
Margaret looked round upon the nursery ; the first room in 
that house with which she had become familiar nine years 
ago, when she was brought, all untamed from the forest, to 
share the home, the play, and the lessons of her cousin 
Edith. She remembered the dark, dim look of the London 
nursery, presided over by an austere and ceremonious nurse, 
who was terribly particular about clean hands and torn 
frocks. She recollected the first tea up there — separate from 
her father and aunt, who were dining somewhere down 
below, an infinite depth of stairs ; for, unless she were up in 
the sky (the child thought), they must be deep down in the 
bowels of the earth. At home — before she came to live in 
Harley Street — her mother’s dressing-room had been her 
nursery ; and, as they kept early hours in the country parson- 
age, Margaret had always had her meals with her father 
and mother. Oh ! well did the tall stately girl of eighteen 
remember the tears shed with such wild passion of grief by 
the little girl of nine, as she hid her face under the bed- 
clothes in that first night ; and how she was bidden not to 
cry by the nurse, because it would disturb Miss Edith ; and 
how she had cried as bitterly, but more quietly, till her 
newly-seen, grand, pretty aunt had come softly upstairs with 
Mr. Hale to show him his little sleeping daughter. Then 
the little Margaret had hushed her sobs, and tried to lie 
quiet as if asleep, for fear of making her father unhappy by 
her grief, which she dared not express before her aunt, and 
which she rather thought it was wrong to feel at all after 
the long hoping, and planning, and contriving they had gone 
through at home, before her wardrobe could be arranged so 
as to suit her grander circumstances, and before papa could 
leave his parish to come up to London, even for a few days. 

Now she had got to love the old nursery, though' it was 
but a dismantled place ; and she looked all round, with a 
kind of cat-like regret, at the idea of leaving it for ever in 
three days. 


5 


North and South 

“ Ah, Newton ! ” said she, “ I think we shall all be sorry 
to leave this dear old room.” 

“ Indeed, miss, I shan’t for one. My eyes are not so 
good as they were, and the light here is so bad that I can’t 
see to mend laces except just at the window, where there’s 
always a shocking draught — enough to give one one’s death 
of cold.” 

“ Well, I daresay you will have both good light and plenty 
of warmth at Naples. You must keep as much of your darn- 
ing as you can till then. Thank you, Newton, I can take 
them down — you’re busy.” 

So Margaret went down laden with shawls, and snuffing 
up their spicy Eastern smell. Her aunt asked her to stand 
as a sort of lay figure on which to display them, as Edith 
was still asleep. No one thought about it; but Margaret’s 
tall, finely made figure, in the black silk dress which she was 
wearing as mourning for some distant relative of her father’s, 
set off the long beautiful folds of the gorgeous shawls that 
would have half-smothered Edith. Margaret stood right 
under the chandelier, quite silent and passive, while her aunt 
adjusted the draperies. Occasionally, as she was turned 
round, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror over the 
chimney-piece, and smiled at her own appearance there — 
the familiar features in the usual garb of a princess. She 
touched the shawls gently as they hung around her, and took 
a pleasure in their soft feel and their brilliant colours, and 
rather liked to be dressed in such splendour — enjoying it 
much as a child would do, with a quiet pleased smile on her 
lips. Just then the door opened, and Mr. Henry Lennox 
was suddenly announced. Some of the ladies started back, 
as if half-ashamed of their feminine interest in dress. Mrs. 
Shaw held out her hand to the new-comer ; Margaret stood 
perfectly still, thinking she might be yet wanted as a sort 
of block for the shawls ; but looking at Mr. Lennox with a 
bright, amused face, as if sure of his sympathy in her sense 
of the ludicrousness at being thus surprised. 

Her aunt was so much absorbed in asking Mr. Henry 
6 


“ Haste to the Wedding ” 

Lennox — who had not been able to come to dinner — all sorts 
of questions about bis brother the bridegroom, bis sister the 
bridesmaid (coming with the Captain from Scotland for the 
occasion), and various other members of the Lennox family, 
that Margaret saw she was no more wanted as shawl-bearer, 
and devoted herself to the amusement of the other visitors, 
whom her aunt had for the moment forgotten. Almost 
immediately, Edith came in from the back drawing-room, 
winking and blinking her eyes at the stronger light, shaking 
back her slightly-ruffled curls, and altogether looking like 
the Sleeping Beauty just startled from her dreams. Even in 
her slumber she had instinctively felt that a Lennox was 
worth rousing herself for ; and she had a multitude of ques- 
tions to ask about dear Janet, the future, unseen sister-in- 
law, for whom she professed so much affection, that if 
Margaret had not been very proud she might have almost 
felt jealous of the mushroom rival. As Margaret sank rather 
more into the background on her aunt’s joining the conversa- 
tion, she saw Henry Lennox directing his look towards a 
vacant seat near her ; and she knew perfectly well that, as 
soon as Edith released him from her questioning, he would 
take possession of that chair. She had not been quite sure, 
from her aunt’s rather confused account of his engagements, 
whether he would come that night ; it was almost a surprise 
to see him; and now she was sure of a pleasant evening. 
He liked and disliked pretty nearly the same things that she 
did. Margaret’s face was lightened up into an honest, open 
brightness. By-and-by he came. She received him with a 
smile which had not a tinge of shyness or self-consciousness 
in it. 

“ Well, I suppose you are all in the depths of business — 
ladies’ business, I mean. Very different to my business, 
which is the real true law business. Playing with shawls 
is very different work to drawing up settlements.” 

“ Ah, I knew how you would be amused to find us all so 
occupied in admiring finery. But really Indian shawls are 
very perfect things of their kind.” 

7 


North and South 

“ I have no doubt they are. Their prices are very perfect, 
too. Nothing wanting.” 

The gentlemen came dropping in one by one, and the 
buzz and noise deepened in tone. 

“ This is your last dinner-party, is it not ? There are no 
more before Thursday ? ” 

“No. I think after this evening we shall feel at rest, 
which I am sure I have not done for many weeks ; at least, 
that kind of rest when the hands have nothing more to do, 
and all the arrangements are complete for an event which 
must occupy one’s head and heart. I shall be glad to have 
time to think, and I am sure Edith will.” 

“ I am not so sure about her; but I can fancy that you 
will. Whenever I have seen you lately, you have been 
carried away by a whirlwind of some other person’s making.” 

“ Yes,” said Margaret rather sadly, remembering the 
never-ending commotion about trifles that had been going on 
for more than a month past; “ I wonder if a marriage must 
always be preceded by what you call a whirlwind, or whether 
in some cases there might not rather be a calm and peaceful 
time just before it.” 

“ Cinderella’s godmother ordering the trousseau, the wed- 
ding-breakfast, writing the notes of invitation, for instance,” 
said Mr. Lennox, laughing. 

“ But are all these quite necessary troubles ? ” asked 
Margaret, looking up straight at him for an answer. A sense 
of indescribable weariness of all the arrangements for a pretty 
effect, in which Edith had been busied as supreme authority 
for the last six weeks, oppressed her just now ; and she really 
wanted some one to help her to a few pleasant, quiet ideas 
connected with a marriage. 

“ Oh, of course,” he replied, with a change to gravity in 
his tone. “ There are forms and ceremonies to be gone 
through, not so much to satisfy oneself, as to stop the world’s 
mouth, without which stoppage there would be very little 
satisfaction in life. But how would you have a wedding 
arranged ? ” 


8 


“Haste to the Wedding” 

“ Oh, I have never thought much about it ; only I should 
like it to be a very fine summer morning ; and I should like 
to walk to church through the shade of trees ; and not to 
have so many bridesmaids ; and to have no wedding-breakfast. 
I dare say I am resolving against the very things that have 
given me the most trouble just now.” 

“ No, I don’t think you are. The idea of stately simplicity 
accords well with your character.” 

Margaret did not quite like this speech ; she winced away 
from it more, from remembering former occasions on which 
he had tried to lead her into a discussion (in which he took 
the complimentary part) about her own character and ways 
of going on. She cut his speech rather short by saying — 

“It is natural for me to think of Helstone church, and 
the walk to it, rather than of driving up to a .London church 
in the middle of a paved street.” 

“ Tell me about Helstone. You have never described it 
to me. I should like to have some idea of the place you will 
be living in, when 96 Harley Street will be looking dingy and 
dirty, and dull, and shut up. Is Helstone a village, or a 
town, in the first place ? ” 

“ Oh, only a hamlet ; I don’t think I could call it a village 
at all. There is the church and a few houses near it on the 
green — cottages, rather — with roses growing all over them.” 

“ And flowering all the year round, especially at Christmas 
— make your picture complete,” said he. 

“ No,” replied Margaret, somewhat annoyed, “ I am not 
making a picture. I am trying to describe Helstone as it 
really is. You should not have said that.” 

“ I am penitent,” he answered. “ Only it really sounded 
like a village in a tale rather than in real life.” 

“ And so it is,” replied Margaret eagerly. “ All the other 
places in England that I have seen seem so hard and prosaic- 
looking, after the New Forest. Helstone is like a village in 
a poem — in one of Tennyson’s poems. But I won’t try and 
describe it any more. You would only laugh at me if I told 
you what I think of it — what it really is.” 

9 


North and South 

“ Indeed, I would not. But I see you are going to be 
very resolved. Well, then, tell me that which I should like 
still better to know : what the parsonage is like.” 

“ Oh, I can’t describe my home. It is home, and I can’t 
put its charm into words.” 

“ I submit. You are rather severe to-night, Margaret.” 

“ How ? ” said she, turning her large, soft eyes round 
full upon him. “ I did not know I was.” 

“ Why, because I made an unlucky remark, you will 
neither tell me what Helstone is like, nor will you say any- 
thing about your home, though I have told you how much 
I want to hear about both, the latter especially.” 

“ But indeed I cannot tell you about my own home. I 
don’t quite think it is a thing to be talked about, unless you 
knew it.” 

“ Well, then ” — pausing for a moment — “ tell me what 
you do there. Here you read, or have lessons, or otherwise 
improve your mind, till the middle of the day ; take a walk 
before lunch, go a drive with your aunt after, and have some 
kind of engagement in the evening. There, now fill up your 
day at Helstone. Shall you ride, drive, or walk ? ” 

“ Walk, decidedly. We have no horse, not even for papa. 
He walks to the very extremity of his parish. The walks 
are so beautiful, it would be a shame to drive — almost a 
shame to ride.” 

“ Shall you garden much ? That, I believe, is a proper 
employment for young ladies in the country.” 

“ I don’t know. I am afraid I shan’t like such hard 
work.” 

“ Archery parties — pic-nics — race balls — hunt-balls ? ” 

“Oh no ! ” said she, laughing. “ Papa’s living is very 
small ; and even if we were near such things, I doubt if I 
should go to them.” 

“ I see, you won’t tell me anything. You will only tell 
me that you are not going to do this and that. Before the 
vacation ends, I think I shall pay you a call, and see what 
you really do employ yourself in.” 

io 


“Haste to the Wedding” 

“ I hope yon will. Then you will see for yourself how 
beautiful Helstone is. Now I must go. Edith is sitting 
down to play, and I just know enough of music to turn over 
the leaves for her ; and besides, Aunt Shaw won’t like us to 
talk.” 

Edith played brilliantly. In the middle of the piece the 
door half-opened, and Edith saw Captain Lennox hesitating 
whether to come in. She threw down her music, and rushed 
out of the room, leaving Margaret standing confused and 
blushing to explain to the astonished guests what vision had 
shown itself to cause Edith’s sudden flight. Captain Lennox 
had come earlier than was expected ; or was it really so 
late ? They looked at their watches, were duly shocked, and 
took their leave. 

Then Edith came back, glowing with pleasure, half-shyly, 
half-proudly leading in her tall handsome Captain. His 
brother shook hands with him, and Mrs. Shaw welcomed him 
in her gentle kindly way, which had always something 
plaintive in it, arising from the long habit of considering her- 
self a victim to an uncongenial marriage. Now that, the 
General being gone, she had every good of life, with as few 
drawbacks as possible, she had been rather perplexed to find 
an anxiety, if not a sorrow. She had, however, of late 
settled upon her own health as a source of apprehension ; 
she had a nervous little cough whenever she thought about 
it ; and some complaisant doctor ordered her just what she 
desired — a winter in Italy. Mrs. Shaw had as strong wishes 
as most people, but she never liked to do anything from the 
open and acknowledged motive of her own good will and 
pleasure ; she preferred being compelled to gratify herself 
by some other person’s command or desire. She really did 
persuade herself that she was submitting to some hard 
external necessity ; and thus she was able to moan and com- 
plain in her soft manner, all the time she was in reality 
doing just what she liked. 

It was in this way she began to speak of her own journey 
to Captain Lennox, who assented, as in duty bound, to all 

ii 


North and South 

his future mother-in-law said, while his eyes sought Edith, 
who was busying herself in re-arranging the tea-table, and 
ordering up all sorts of good things, in spite of his assur- 
ances that he had dined within the last two hours. 

Mr. Henry Lennox stood leaning against the chimney- 
piece, amused with the family scene. He was close by his 
handsome brother ; he was the plain one in a singularly 
good-looking family ; but his face was intelligent, keen, and 
mobile ; and now and then Margaret wondered what it was 
that he could be thinking about, while he kept silence, but 
was evidently observing, with an interest that was slightly 
sarcastic, all that Edith and she were doing. The sarcastic 
feeling was called out by Mrs. Shaw’s conversation with his 
brother ; it was separate from the interest which was excited 
by what he saw. He thought it a pretty sight to see the two 
cousins so busy in their little arrangements about the table. 
Edith chose to do most herself. She was in a humour to 
enjoy showing her lover how well she could behave as a 
soldier’s wife. She found out that the water in the urn was 
cold, and ordered up the great kitchen tea-kettle ; the only 
consequence of which was that, when she met it at the door, 
and tried to carry it in, it was too heavy for her, and she 
came in pouting, with a black mark on her muslin gown, and 
a little round white hand indented by the handle, which 
she took to show to Captain Lennox, just like a hurt child, 
and of course, the remedy was the same in both cases. 
Margaret’s quickly- adjusted spirit-lamp was the most effica- 
cious contrivance, though not so like the gipsy-encampment 
which Edith, in some of her moods, chose to consider the 
nearest resemblance to a barrack-life. 

After this evening all was bustle till the wedding was 
over. 


12 


Roses and Thorns 


CHAPTER II 

ROSES AND THORNS 

“ By the soft green light in the woody glade, 

On the banks of moss where thy childhood played ; 

By the household tree, thro’ which thine eye 
First looked in love to the summer sky.” 

Mrs. Hemans. 

Margaret was once more in her morning dress, travelling 
quietly home with her father, who had come up to assist at 
the wedding. Her mother had been detained at home by a 
multitude of half-reasons, none of which anybody fully 
understood, except Mr. Hale, who was perfectly aware that 
all his arguments in favour of a grey satin gown, which was 
midway between oldness and newness, had proved unavail- 
ing ; and that, as he had not the money to equip his wife 
afresh, from top to toe, she would not show herself at 
her only sister’s only child’s wedding. If Mrs. Shaw 
had guessed at the real reason why Mrs. Hale did not 
accompany her husband, she would have showered down 
gowns upon her ; but it was nearly twenty years since Mrs. 
Shaw had been the poor pretty Miss Beresford, and she had 
really forgotten all grievances except that of the unhappiness 
arising from disparity of age in married life, on which she 
could descant by the half-hour. Dearest Maria had married 
the man of her heart, only eight years older than herself, 
with the sweetest temper, and that blue-black hair one so 
seldom sees. Mr. Hale was one of the most delightful 
preachers she had ever heard, and a perfect model of a 
parish priest. Perhaps it was not quite a logical deduction 
from all these premises, but it was still Mrs. Shaw’s cha- 
racteristic conclusion, as she thought over her sister’s lot : 
“ Married for love, what can dearest Maria have to wish for 
in this world ? *’ Mrs. Hale, if she spoke truth, might have 

13 


North and South 

answered with a ready-made list, “ a silver-grey glace silk, 
a white chip bonnet, oh ! dozens of things for the wedding, 
and hundreds of things for the house.” 

Margaret only knew that her mother had not found it 
convenient to come ; and she was not sorry to think that 
their meeting and greeting would take place at Helstone 
parsonage, rather than, during the confusion of the last two 
or three days, in the house in Harley Street, where she her- 
self had had to play the part of Figaro, and was wanted 
everywhere at one and the same time. Her mind and body 
ached now with the recollection of all she had done and said 
within the last forty-eight hours. The farewells so hurriedly 
taken, amongst all the other good-byes, of those she had 
lived with so long, oppressed her now with a sad regret for 
the times that were no more ; it did not signify what those 
times had been, they were gone never to return. Margaret’s 
heart felt more heavy than she could ever have thought it 
possible in going to her own dear home, the place and the 
life she had longed for for years — at that time of all times 
for yearning and longing, just before the sharp senses lose 
their outlines in sleep. She took her mind away with a 
wrench from the recollection of the past to the bright, serene 
contemplation of the hopeful future. Her eyes began to see, 
not visions of what had been, but the sight actually before 
her : her dear father leaning back asleep in the railway 
carriage. His blue-black hair was grey now, and lay thinly 
over his brows. The bones of his face were plainly to be 
seen — too plainly for beauty, if his features had been less 
finely cut ; as it was, they had a grace if not a comeliness of 
their own. The face was in repose ; but it was rather rest 
after weariness than the serene calm of the countenance of 
one who led a placid, contented life. Margaret was painfully 
struck by the worn, anxious . expression ; and she went back 
over the open and avowed circumstances of her father’s life, 
to find the cause for the lines that spoke so plainly of habitual 
distress and depression. 

“ Poor Frederick ! ” thought she, sighing. 

i4 


“Oh! if 


Roses and Thorns 

Frederick had but been a clergyman, instead of going into 
the navy, and being lost to us all ! I wish I knew all about 
it. I never understood it from Aunt Sbaw ; I only knew be 
could not come back to England because of that terrible 
affair. Poor dear papa ! bow sad be looks ! I am so glad 
I am going borne, to be at band to comfort him and 
mamma.” 

She was ready with a bright smile, in which there was 
not a trace of fatigue, to greet her father when be awakened. 
He smiled back again, but faintly, as if it were an unusual 
exertion. His face returned into its bnes of habitual, anxiety. 
He bad a trick of half-opening bis mouth as if to speak, 
which constantly unsettled the form of the lips, and gave 
the face an undecided expression. But he had the same 
large, soft eyes as bis daughter — eyes which moved slowly 
and almost grandly round in their orbits, and were well 
veiled by their transparent white eyelids. Margaret was 
more like him than like her mother. Sometimes people 
wondered that parents so handsome should have a daughter 
who was so far from regularly, beautiful ; not beautiful at 
all, was occasionally said. Her mouth was wide ; no rose- 
bud that could only open just enough to let out a “ yes ” 
and “ no,” and “ an’t please you, sir.” But the wide mouth 
was one soft curve of rich red lips ; and the skin, if not 
white and fair, was of an ivory smoothness and delicacy. 
If the look on her face was, in general, too dignified and 
reserved for one so young, now, talking to her father, it was 
bright as the morning — full of dimples, and glances that 
spoke of childish gladness, and boundless hope in the future. 

It was the latter part of July when Margaret returned 
home. The forest trees were all one dark, full, dusky green ; 
the fern below them caught all the slanting sunbeams ; the 
weather was sultry and broodingly still. Margaret used to 
tramp along by her father’s side, crushing down the fern 
with a cruel glee, as she felt it yield under her light foot, 
and send up the fragrance peculiar to it — out on the broad 
commons into the warm, scented light, seeing multitudes of 

15 


North and South 

wild, free, living creatures, revelling in the sunshine, and the 
herbs and flowers it called forth. This life — at least these 
walks — realised all Margaret’s anticipations. She took a 
pride in her forest. Its people were her people. She made 
hearty friends with them ; learned and delighted in using 
their peculiar words ; took up her freedom amongst them ; 
nursed their babies ; talked or read with slow distinctness 
to their old people ; carried dainty messes to their sick ; 
resolved before long to teach at the school, where her father 
went every day as to an appointed task, but she was con- 
tinually tempted off to go and see some individual friend — 
man, woman, or child — in some cottage in the green shade 
of the forest. Her out-of-doors life was perfect. Her indoors 
life had its drawbacks. With the healthy shame of a child, 
she blamed herself for her keenness of sight, in perceiving 
that all was not as it should be there. Her mother — her 
mother always so kind and tender towards her — seemed 
now and then so much discontented with their situation ; 
thought that the bishop strangely neglected his episcopal 
duties, in not giving Mr. Hale a better living ; and almost 
reproached her husband because he could not bring himself 
to say that he wished to leave the parish, and undertake the 
charge of a larger. He would sigh aloud as he answered, 
that if he could do what he ought in little Helstone, he 
should be thankful ; but every day he was more overpowered ; 
the world became more bewildering. At each repeated 
urgency of his wife, that he would put himself in the way 
of seeking some preferment, Margaret saw that her father 
shrank more and more ; and she strove at such times to 
reconcile her mother to Helstone. Mrs. Hale said that the 
near neighbourhood of so many trees affected her health ; 
and Margaret would try to tempt her forth on to the beautiful, 
broad, upland, sunstreaked, cloud- shadowed common; for 
she was sure that her mother had accustomed n too 
much to an indoors life, seldom extending her walks ^ ond 
the church, the school, and the neighbouring cottages. This 
did good for a time ; but when the autumn drew on, and 

16 


Roses and Thorns 

the weather became more changeable, her mother’s idea of 
the unhealthiness of the place increased ; and she repined 
even more frequently that her husband, who was more 
learned than Mr. Hume, a better parish priest than Mr. 
Houldsworth, should not have met with the preferment that 
these two former neighbours of theirs had obtained. 

This marring of the peace of home, by long hours of 
discontent, was what Margaret was unprepared for. She 
knew, and had rather revelled in the idea, that she should 
have to give up many luxuries, which had only been troubles 
and trammels to her freedom in Harley Street. Her keen 
enjoyment of every sensuous pleasure was balanced finely, 
if not overbalanced, by her conscious pride in being able to 
do without them all, if need were. But the cloud never 
comes in that quarter of the horizon from which we watch 
for it. There had been slight complaints and passing 
regrets on her mother’s part, over some trifle connected 
with Helstone, and her father’s position there, when 
Margaret had been spending her holidays at home before ; 
but in the general happiness of the recollection of those 
times, she had forgotten the small details which were not 
so pleasant. 

In the latter half of September, the autumnal rains and 
storms came on, and Margaret was obliged to remain more 
in the house than she had hitherto. Helstone was at some 
distance from any neighbours of their own standard of 
cultivation. 

“ It is undoubtedly one of the most out-of-the-way places 
in England,” said Mrs. Hale, in one of her plaintive moods. 
“ I can’t help regretting constantly that papa has really no 
one to associate with here ; he is so thrown away ; seeing 
no one but farmers and labourers from week’s end to week’s 
end. If we o T 'ly lived at the other side of the parish, it 
would be' hething ; there we should be almost within 
walking &j' .ance of the Stansfields ; certainly the Gormans 
would be within a walk.” 

“ Gormans ? ” said Margaret. “ Are those the Gormans 
17 0 


North and South 

who made their fortunes in trade at Southampton ? Oh ! 
I’m glad we don’t visit them. I don’t like shoppy people. 
I think we are far better off, knowing only cottagers and 
labourers, and people without pretence.” 

“ You must not be so fastidious, Margaret, dear ! ” said 
her mother, secretly thinking of a young and handsome Mr. 
Gorman whom she had once met at Mr. Hume’s. 

“ No ! I call mine a very comprehensive taste ; I like 
all people whose occupations have to do with land ; I like 
soldiers and sailors, and the three learned professions, as 
they call them. I’m sure you don’t want me to admire 
butchers and bakers, and candlestick-makers, do you, 
mamma ? ” 

“ But the Gormans were neither butchers nor bakers, 
but very respectable coach-builders.” 

“ Very well. Coach-building is a trade all the same, and 
I think a much more useless one than that of butchers or 
bakers. Oh ! how tired I used to be of the drives every 
day in Aunt Shaw’s carriage, and how I longed to walk ! ” 

And walk Margaret did, in spite of the weather. She 
was so happy out of doors, at her father’s side, that she 
almost danced ; and with the soft violence of the west wind 
behind her, as she crossed some heath, she seemed to be 
borne onwards, as lightly and easily as the fallen leaf that 
was wafted along by the autumnal breeze. But the evenings 
were rather difficult to fill up agreeably. Immediately after 
tea her father withdrew into his small library, and she and 
her mother were left alone. Mrs. Hale had never cared 
much for books, and had discouraged her husband, very 
early in their married life, in his desire of reading aloud to 
her, while she worked. At one time they had tried back- 
gammon as a resource; but as Mr. Hale grew to take an 
increasing interest in his school and his parishioners, he 
found that the interruptions which arose out of these duties 
were regarded as hardships by his wife, not to be accepted 
as the natural conditions of his profession, but to be regretted 
and struggled against by her as they severally arose. So he 

18 


Roses and Thorns 

withdrew, while the children were yet young, into his library, 
to spend his evenings (if he were at home), in reading the 
speculative and metaphysical books which were his delight. 

When Margaret had been here before, she had brought 
down with her a great box of books, recommended by masters 
or governess, and had found the summer’s day all too short 
to get through the reading she had to do before her return 
to town. Now there were only the well-bound little-read 
English Classics, which were weeded out of her father’s 
library to fill up the small book- shelves in the drawing-room. 
Thomson’s Seasons, Hayley’s Cowper, Middleton’s Cicero, 
were by far the lightest, newest, and most amusing. The 
book-shelves did not afford much resource. Margaret told 
her mother every particular of her London life, to all of 
which Mrs. Hale listened with interest, sometimes amused 
and questioning, at others a little inclined to compare her 
sister’s circumstances of ease and comfort with the narrower 
means at Helstone vicarage. On such evenings Margaret 
was apt to stop talking rather abruptly, and listen to the 
drip-drip of the rain upon the leads of the little bow-window. 
Once or twice Margaret found herself mechanically counting 
the repetition of the monotonous sound, while she wondered 
if she might venture to put a question on a subject very 
near to her heart, and ask where Frederick was now ; what 
he was doing ; how long it was since they had heard from 
him. But a consciousness that her mother’s delicate health, 
and positive dislike to Helstone, all dated from the time of 
the mutiny in which Frederick had been engaged — the full 
account of which Margaret had never heard, and which now 
seemed doomed to be buried in sad oblivion — made her pause 
and turn away from the subject each time she approached it. 
When she was with her mother, her father seemed the best 
person to apply to for information ; and when with him, she 
thought that she could speak more easily to her mother. 
Probably there was nothing much to be heard that was new. 
In one of the letters she had received before leaving Harley 
Street, her father had told her that they had heard from 

19 


North and South 

Frederick ; he was still at Rio, and very well in health, and 
sent his best love to her ; which was dry bones, but not the 
living intelligence she longed for. Frederick was always 
spoken of, in the rare times when his name was mentioned, 
as “ Poor Frederick.” His room was kept exactly as he had 
left it ; and was regularly dusted, and put into order by 
Dixon, Mrs. Hale’s maid, who touched no other part of the 
household work, but always remembered the day when she 
had been engaged by Lady Beresford as ladies’ maid to 
Sir John’s wards, the pretty Miss Beresfords, the belles of 
Rutlandshire. Dixon had always considered Mr. Hale as 
the blight which had fallen upon her young lady’s prospects 
in life. If Miss Beresford had not been in such a hurry 
to marry a poor country clergyman, there was no knowing 
what she might not have become. But Dixon was too loyal 
to desert her in her affliction and downfall (alas ! her married 
life). She remained with her, and was devoted to her 
interests ; always considering herself as the good and pro- 
tecting fairy, whose duty it was to baffle the malignant giant, 
Mr. Hale. Master Frederick had been her favourite and 
pride ; and it was with a little softening of her dignified 
look and manner, that she went in weekly to arrange the 
chamber as carefully as if he might be coming home that 
very evening. 

Margaret could not help believing that there had been 
some late intelligence of Frederick, unknown to her mother, 
which was making her father anxious and uneasy. Mrs. 
Hale did not seem to perceive any alteration in her husband’s 
looks or ways. His spirits were always tender and gentle, 
readily affected by any small piece of intelligence concerning 
the welfare of others. He would be depressed for many 
days after witnessing a death-bed, or hearing of any crime. 
But now Margaret noticed an absence of mind, as if his 
thoughts were preoccupied by some subject, the oppression 
of which could not be relieved by any daily action, such as 
comforting the survivors, or teaching at the school in hope 
of lessening the evils in the generation to come. Mr. Hale 

20 


Roses and Thorns 

did not go out among his parishioners as much as usual ; he 
was more shut up in his study ; was anxious for the village 
postman, whose summons to the household was a rap on 
the back-kitchen window -shutter — a signal which at one 
time had often to be repeated before any one was sufficiently 
alive to the hour of the day to understand what it was, and 
attend to him. Now Mr. Hale loitered about the garden if 
the morning was fine, and, if not, stood dreamily by the study 
window until the postman had called, or gone down the 
lane, giving a half-respectful, half-confidential shake of the 
head to the parson, who watched him away beyond the sweet- 
briar hedge, and past the great arbutus, before he turned 
into the room to begin his day’s work, with all the signs of 
a heavy heart and an occupied mind. 

But Margaret was at an age when any apprehension, not 
absolutely based on a knowledge of facts, is easily banished 
for a time by a bright sunny day, or some happy outward 
circumstance. And when the brilliant fourteen fine days of 
October came on, her cares were all blown away as lightly 
as thistledown, and she thought of nothing but the glories 
of the forest. The fern-harvest was over; and now that 
the rain was gone, many a deep glade was accessible, into 
which Margaret had only peeped in July and August weather. 
She had learnt drawing with Edith ; and she had sufficiently 
regretted, during the gloom of the bad weather, her idle 
revelling in the beauty of the woodlands, while it had yet 
been fine, to make her determined to sketch what she could 
before winter fairly set in. Accordingly, she was busy pre- 
paring her board one morning, when Sarah, the housemaid, 
threw wide open the drawing-room door, and announced, 
“ Mr. Henry Lennox.” 


21 


North and South 


CHAPTER III 

u THE MORE HASTE THE WORSE SPEED ” 

“ Learn to win a lady’s faith 
Nobly, as the thing is high ; 

Bravely, as for life and death — 

With a loyal gravity. 

Lead her from the festive boards, 

Point her to the starry skies, 

Guard her, by your truthful words, 

Pure from courtship’s flatteries.” 

Mrs. Browning. 

“ Mr. Henry Lennox.” Margaret had been thinking of 
him only a moment before, and remembering his inquiry 
into her probable occupations at home. It was parler du 
soleil et Von en writ les rayons ; and the brightness of the 
sun came over Margaret’s face as she put down her board, 
and went forward to shake hands with him. “ Tell mamma, 
Sarah,” said she. “ Mamma and I want to ask you so many 
questions about Edith; I am so much obliged to you for 
coming.” 

“ Did not I say that I should ? ” asked he, in a lower tone 
than that in which he had spoken. 

“ But I heard of you so far away in the Highlands that 
I never thought Hampshire could come in.” 

“Oh!” said he, more lightly, “our young couple were 
playing such foolish pranks, running all sorts of risks, climb- 
ing this mountain, sailing on that lake, that I really thought 
they needed a Mentor to take care of them. And indeed 
they did : they were quite beyond my uncle’s management, 
and kept the old gentleman in a panic for sixteen hours out 
of the twenty-four. Indeed, when I once saw how unfit 
they were to be trusted alone, I thought it my duty not 
to leave them till I had seen them safely embarked at 
Plymouth.” 


22 


“ The More Haste the Worse Speed ” 

“ Have you been at Plymouth ? Oh ! Edith never named 
that. To be sure, she has written in such a hurry lately. 
Did they really sail on Tuesday ? ” 

“ Really sailed, and relieved me from many responsibilities. 
Edith gave me all sorts of messages for you. I believe I 
have a little diminutive note somewhere; yes, here it is.” 

“ Oh ! thank you,” exclaimed Margaret ; and then, half 
wishing to read it alone and un watched, she made the excuse 
of going to tell her mother again (Sarah surely had made 
some mistake) that Mr. Lennox was there. 

When she had left the room, he began in his scrutinising 
way to look about him. The little drawing-room was look- 
ing its best in the streaming light of the morning sun. The 
middle window in the bow was opened, and clustering roses 
and the scarlet honeysuckle came peeping round the comer ; 
the small lawn was gorgeous with verbenas and geraniums 
of all bright colours. But the very brightness outside made 
the colours within seem poor and faded. The carpet was 
far from new ; the chintz had been often washed ; the whole 
apartment was smaller and shabbier than he had expected, 
as background and framework for Margaret, herself so 
queenly. He took up one of the books lying on the table ; 
it was the “ Paradiso ” of Dante, in the proper old Italian 
binding of white vellum and gold; by it lay a dictionary, 
and some words copied out in Margaret’s handwriting. 
They were a dull list of words, but somehow he liked looking 
at them. He put them down with a sigh. 

“ The living is evidently as small as she said. It seems 
strange, for the Beresfords belong to a good family.” 

Margaret meanwhile had found her mother. It was one 
of Mrs. Hale’s fitful days, when everything was a difficulty 
and a hardship : and Mr. Lennox’s appearance took this 
shape, although secretly she felt complimented by his 
thinking it worth while to call. 

“It is most unfortunate ! We are dining early to-day, 
and having nothing but cold meat, in order that the servants 
may get on with their ironing ; and yet, of course, we must 

23 


North and South 

ask him to dinner — Edith’s brother-in-law and all. And 
your papa is in such low spirits this morning about some- 
thing — I don’t know what. I went into the study just now, 
and he had his face on the table, covering it with his hands. 
I told him I was sure Helstone air did not agree with him 
any more than with me, and he suddenly lifted up his head, 
and begged me not to speak a word more against Helstone, 
he could not bear it ; if there was one place he loved on 
earth it was Helstone. But I am sure, for all that, it is the 
damp and relaxing air.” 

Margaret felt as if a thin cold cloud had come between 
her and the sun. She had listened patiently, in hopes that 
it might be some relief to her mother to unburden herself ; 
but now it was time to draw her back to Mr. Lennox. 

“ Papa likes Mr. Lennox ; they got on together famously 
at the wedding breakfast. I dare say his coming will do 
papa good. And never mind the dinner, dear mamma. 
Cold meat will do capitally for a lunch, which is the light 
in which Mr. Lennox will most likely look upon a two-o’clock 
dinner.” 

“But what are we to do with him till then ? It is only 
half-past ten now.” 

“ I’ll ask him to go out sketching with me. I know he 
draws, and that will take him out of your way, mamma. 
Only do come in now; he will think it so strange if you 
don’t.” 

Mrs. Hale took off her black silk apron, and smoothed 
her face. She looked a very pretty lady-like woman, as she 
greeted Mr. Lennox with the cordiality due to one who was 
almost a relation. He evidently expected to be asked to 
spend the day, and accepted the invitation with a glad 
readiness that made Mrs. Hale wish she could add some- 
thing to the cold beef. He was pleased with everything ; 
delighted with Margaret’s idea of going out sketching to- 
gether ; would not have Mr. Hale disturbed for the world, 
with the prospect of so soon meeting him at dinner. Mar- 
garet brought out her drawing materials for him to choose 

24 


“ The More Haste the Worse Speed ” 

from, and after the paper and brushes had been duly selected, 
the two set out in the merriest spirits in the world. 

“ Now, please, just stop here for a minute or two,” said 
Margaret. “ These are the cottages that haunted me so 
during the rainy fortnight, reproaching me for not having 
sketched them.” 

“ Before they tumbled down and were no more seen. 
Truly, if they are to be sketched — and they are very pic- 
turesque — we had better not put it off till next year. But 
where shall we sit ? ” 

“ Oh ! You might have come straight from chambers 
in the Temple, instead of having been two months in the 
Highlands ! Look at this beautiful trunk of a tree, which 
the woodcutters have left just in the right place for the 
light. I will put my plaid over it, and it will be a regular 
forest throne.” 

“With your feet in that puddle for a regal footstool ! 
Stay, I will move, and then you can come nearer this way. 
Who lives in these cottages ? ” 

“ They were built by squatters fifty or sixty years ago. 
One is uninhabited ; the foresters are going to take it down, 
as soon as the old man who lives in the other is dead, poor 
old fellow ! Look — there he is — I must go and speak to 
him. He is so deaf you will hear all our secrets.” 

The old man stood bareheaded in the sun, leaning on his 
stick at the front of his cottage. His stiff features relaxed 
into a slow smile as Margaret went up and spoke to him. 
Mr. Lennox hastily introduced the two figures into his sketch, 
and finished up the landscape with a subordinate reference 
to them — as Margaret perceived, when the time came for 
getting up, putting away water, and scraps of paper, and 
exhibiting to each other their sketches. She laughed and 
blushed ; Mr. Lennox watched her countenance. 

“ Now, I call that treacherous,” said she. “ I little 
thought you were making old Isaac and me into subjects, 
when you told me to ask him the history of those cottages.” 

“It was irresistible. You can’t know how strong a 
25 


North and South 

temptation it was. I hardly dare tell you how much I shall 
like this sketch.” 

He was not quite sure whether she heard this latter 
sentence before she went to the brook to wash her palette. 
She came back rather flushed, but looking perfectly innocent 
and unconscious. He was glad of it, for the speech had 
slipped from him unawares— a rare thing in the case of a 
man who premeditated his actions so much as Henry Lennox. 

The aspect of home was all right and bright when they 
reached it. The clouds on her mother’s brow had cleared 
off under the propitious influence of a brace of carp, most 
opportunely presented by a neighbour. Mr. Hale had re- 
turned from his morning’s round, and was awaiting his 
visitor just outside the wicket gate that led into the garden. 
He looked a complete gentleman in his rather threadbare 
coat and well-worn hat. Margaret was proud of her father ; 
she had always a fresh and tender pride in seeing how 
favourably he impressed every stranger ; still her quick eye 
sought over his face and found there traces of some unusual 
disturbance, which was only put aside, not cleared away. 

Mr. Hale asked to look at their sketches. 

“ I think you have made the tints on the thatch too 
dark, have you not ? ” as he returned Margaret’s to her, and 
held out his hand for Mr. Lennox’s, which was withheld 
from him one moment, no more. 

“ No, papa ! I don’t think I have. The house-leek and 
stone-crop have grown so much darker in the rain. Is it 
not like, papa ? ” said she, peeping over his shoulder, as he 
looked at the figures in Mr. Lennox’s drawing. 

“ Yes, very like. Your figure and way of holding your- 
self is capital. And it is just poor old Isaac’s stiff way of 
stooping his long rheumatic back. What is this hanging 
from the branch of the tree? Not a bird’s nest, surely.” 

“ Oh no ! that is my bonnet. I never can draw with 
my bonnet on ; it makes my head so hot. I wonder if .1 
could manage figures. There are so many people about 
here whom I should like to sketch.” 

26 


“ The More Haste the Worse Speed ” 

“I should say that a likeness you very much wish to 
take you would always succeed in,” said Mr. Lennox. “ I 
have great faith in the power of will. I think myself I have 
succeeded pretty well in yours.” Mr. Hale had preceded 
them into the house, while Margaret was lingering to pluck 
some roses, with which to adorn her morning gown for 
dinner. 

“ A regular London girl would understand the implied 
meaning of that speech,” thought Mr. Lennox. “ She would 
be up to looking through every speech that a young man 
made her for the arribe-jpensee of a compliment. But I 
don’t believe Margaret — Stay ! ” exclaimed he, “ Let me 
help you ; ” and he gathered for her some velvety cramoisy 
roses that were above her reach, and then dividing the spoil 
he placed two in his button-hole, and sent her in, pleased 
and happy, to arrange her flowers. 

The conversation at dinner flowed on quietly and agree- 
ably. There were plenty of questions to be asked on both 
sides — the latest intelligence which each could give of Mrs. 
Shaw’s movements in Italy to be exchanged; and in the 
interest of what was said, the unpretending simplicity of 
the parsonage ways — above all, in the neighbourhood of 
Margaret, Mr. Lennox forgot the little feeling of disappoint- 
ment with which he had at first perceived that she had 
spoken but the simple truth, when she had described her 
father’s living as very small. 

“ Margaret, my child, you might have gathered us some 
pears for our dessert,” said Mr. Hale, as the hospitable 
luxury of a freshly- decanted bottle of wine was placed on 
the table. 

Mrs. Hale was hurried. It seemed as if desserts were 
impromptu and unusual things at the parsonage ; whereas, 
if Mr. Hale would only have looked behind him, he would 
have seen biscuits and marmalade, and what not, all arranged 
in formal order on the sideboard. But the idea of pears had 
taken possession of Mr. Hale’s mind, and was not to be 
got rid of. 


27 


North and South 

“ There are a few brown beurres against the south wall 
which are worth all foreign fruits and preserves. Run, 
Margaret, and gather some.” 

“ I propose that we adjourn into the garden, and eat 
them there,” said Mr. Lennox. “ Nothing is so delicious 
as to set one’s teeth into the crisp, juicy fruit, warm and 
scented by the sun. The worst is, the wasps are impudent 
enough to dispute it with one, even at the very crisis and 
summit of enjoyment.” 

He rose, as if to follow Margaret, who had disappeared 
through the window; he only awaited Mrs. Hale’s per- 
mission. She would rather have wound up the dinner in 
the proper way, and with all the ceremonies which had gone 
on so smoothly hitherto, especially as she and Dixon had 
got out the finger-glasses from the store-room on purpose 
to be as correct as became General Shaw’s widow’s sister ; 
but, as Mr. Hale got up directly, and prepared to accompany 
his guest, she could only submit. 

“ I shall arm myself with a knife,” said Mr. Hale ; “ the 
days of eating fruit so primitively as you describe are over 
with me. I must pare it and quarter it before I can 
enjoy it.” 

Margaret made a plate for the pears out of a beet-root 
leaf, which threw up their brown gold colour admirably. 
Mr. Lennox looked more at her than at the pears ; but her 
father, inclined to cull fastidiously the very zest and per- 
fection of the hour he had stolen from his anxiety, chose 
daintily the ripest fruit, and sat down on the -garden bench 
to enjoy it at his leisure. Margaret and Mr. Lennox strolled 
along the little terrace-walk under the south wall, where the 
bees still hummed and worked busily in their hives. 

“What a perfect life you seem to live here! I have 
always felt rather contemptuously towards the poets before, 
with their wishes, ‘ Mine be a cot beside a hill,’ and that 
sort of thing ; but now I am afraid that the truth is, I have 
been nothing better than a Cockney. Just now I feel as 
if twenty years’ hard study of law would be amply rewarded 

28 


“ The More Haste the Worse Speed ” 

by one year of such an exquisite serene life as this — such 
skies ! ” looking up — “ such crimson and amber foliage, so 
perfectly motionless as that ! ” pointing to some of the great 
forest trees which shut in the garden as if it were a nest. 

“ You must please to remember that our skies are not 
always as deep a blue as they are now. We have rain, 
and our leaves do fall, and get sodden ; though I think 
Helstone is about as perfect a place as any in the world. 
Recollect how you rather scorned my description of it one 
evening in Harley Street : ‘ a village in a tale.’ ” 

“ Scorned, Margaret ! That is rather a hard word.” 

“ Perhaps it is. Only I know I should have liked to 
have talked to you of what I was very full at the time, and 
you — what must I call it then ? — spoke disrespectfully of 
Helstone as a mere village in a tale.” 

“ I will never do so again,” said he warmly. They turned 
the corner of the walk. 

“ I could almost wish, Margaret ” he stopped and 

hesitated. It was so unusual for the fluent lawyer to hesitate 
that Margaret looked up at him, in a little state of question- 
ing wonder; but in an instant— from what about him she 
could not tell — she wished herself back with her mother — 
her father — anywhere away from him, for she was sure he 
was going to say something to which she should not know 
what to reply. In another moment the strong pride that 
was in her came to conquer her sudden agitation, which she 
hoped he had not perceived. Of course she could answer, 
and answer the right thing ; and it was poor and despicable 
of her to shrink from hearing any speech, as if she had not 
power to put an end to it with her high maidenly dignity. 

“ Margaret,” said he, taking her by surprise, and getting 
sudden possession of her hand, so that she was forced to 
stand still and listen, despising herself for the fluttering at 
her heart all the time ; “ Margaret, I wish you did not like 
Helstone so much — did not seem so perfectly calm and happy 
here. I have been hoping for these three months past to find 
you regretting London — and London friends, a little — enough 

29 


North and South 

to make yon listen more kindly ” (for she was quietly, but 
firmly, striving to extricate her hand from his grasp) “ to 
one who has not much to offer, it is true — nothing but 
prospects in the future — but who does love you, Margaret, 
almost in spite of himself. Margaret, have I startled you 
too much ? Speak ! ” For he saw her lips quivering almost 
as if she were going to cry. She made a strong effort to 
be calm ; she would not speak till she had succeeded in 
mastering her voice, and then she said — 

“ I was startled. I did not know that you cared for me 
in that way. I have always thought of you as a friend ; and, 
please, I would rather go on thinking of you so. I don’t like 
to be spoken to as you have been doing. I cannot answer 
you as you want me to do, and yet I should feel so sorry if I 
vexed you.” 

“ Margaret,” said he, looking into her eyes, which met 
his with their open, straight look, expressive of the utmost 
good faith and reluctance to give pain, “ Do you ” — he was 
going to say — “ love any one else ? ” But it seemed as if 
this question would be an insult to the pure serenity of 
those eyes. “Forgive me! I have been too abrupt. 
I am punished. Only let me hope. Give me the poor com- 
fort of telling me you have never seen any one whom you 

could ” Again a pause. He could not end his sentence. 

Margaret reproached herself acutely as the cause of his 
distress. 

“ Ah ! if you had but never got this fancy into your head ! 
It was such a pleasure to think of you as a friend.” 

“ But I may hope, may I not, Margaret, that some time 
you will think of me as a lover ? Not yet, I see — there is no 
hurry — but some time ” 

She was silent for a minute or two, trying to discover 
the truth as it was in her own heart, before replying, then 
she said — 

“ I have never thought of — you, but as a friend. I like 
to think of you so ; but I am sure I could never think of you 
as anything else. Pray let us both forget that all this ” 

3 ° 


“ The More Haste the Worse Speed” 

(“ disagreeable,” she was going to say, but stopped short) 
“ conversation has taken place.” 

He paused before he replied. Then, in his habitual 
coldness of tone, he answered — 

“ Of course, as your feelings are so decided, and as this 
conversation has been so evidently unpleasant to you, it had 
better not be remembered. That is all very fine in theory, 
that plan of forgetting whatever is painful; but it will be 
somewhat difficult for me, at least, to carry it into execution.” 

“ You are vexed,” said she sadly ; “ yet how can I help 
it ? ” 

She looked so truly grieved as she said this, that he 
struggled for a moment with his real disappointment, and 
then answered more cheerfully, but still with a little hardness 
in his tone — 

“You should make allowances for the mortification, not 
only of a lover, Margaret, but of a man not given to romance 
in general — prudent, worldly, as some people call me — who 
has been carried out of his usual habits by the force of a 
passion — well, we will say no more of that ; but in the one 
outlet which he has formed for the deeper and better feelings 
of his nature, he meets with rejection and repulse. I shall 
have to console myself with scorning my own folly. A 
struggling barrister to think of matrimony ! ” 

Margaret could not answer this. The whole tone of it 
annoyed her. It seemed to touch on and call out all the 
points of difference which had often repelled her in him ; 
while yet he was the pleasantest man, the most sympathising 
friend, the person of all others who understood her best in 
Harley Street. She felt a tinge of contempt mingle itself 
with her pain at having refused him. Her beautiful lip 
curled in a slight disdain. It was well that, having made 
the round of the garden, they came suddenly upon Mr. 
Hale, whose whereabouts had been quite forgotten by them. 
He had not yet finished the pear, which Ke had delicately 
peeled in one long strip of silver-paper thinness, and which 
he was enjoying in a deliberate manner. It was like the 

3 T 


North and South 

story of the eastern king, who dipped his head into a basin 
of water, at the magician’s command, and ere he instantly 
took it out went through the experience of a lifetime. 
Margaret felt stunned, and unable to recover her self-pos- 
session enough to join in the trivial conversation that ensued 
between her father and Mr. Lennox. She was grave, and 
little disposed to speak ; full of wonder when Mr. Lennox 
would go, and allow her to relax into thought on the events 
of the last quarter of an hour. He was almost as anxious to 
take his departure as she was for him to leave ; but a few 
minutes’ light and careless talking, carried on at whatever 
effort, was a sacrifice which he owed to his mortified vanity, 
or his self-respect. He glanced from time to time at her 
sad and pensive face. 

“ I am not so indifferent to her as she believes,” thought 
he to himself. “I do not give up hope.” 

Before a quarter of an hour was over, he had fallen into 
a way of conversing with quiet sarcasm ; speaking of life 
in London and life in the country, as if he were conscious of 
his second mocking self, and afraid of his own satire. Mr. 
Hale was puzzled. His visitor was a different man to what 
he had seen him before at the wedding-breakfast, and at 
dinner to-day ; a lighter, cleverer, more worldly man, and, 
as such, dissonant to Mr. Hale. It was a relief to all three 
when Mr. Lennox said that he must go directly if he meant 
to catch the five o’clock train. They proceeded to the house 
to find Mrs. Hale, and wish her good-bye. At the last 
moment, Henry Lennox’s real self broke through the crust. 

“ Margaret, don’t despise me ; I have a heart, notwith- 
standing all this good-for-nothing way of talking. As a proof 
of it, I believe I love you more than ever — if I do not hate 
you — for the disdain with which you have listened to me during 
this last half-hour. Good-bye, Margaret — Margaret! ” 


32 


Doubts and Difficulties 


CHAPTER IV 

DOUBTS AND DIFFICULTIES 

“ Cast me upon some naked shore, 

Where I may tracke 

Only the print of some sad wracke, 

If thou be there though the seas roare, 

I shall no gentler calm implore.” 

Habington. 

He was gone. The house was shut up for the evening. No 
more deep blue skies or crimson and amber tints. Margaret 
went up to dress for the early tea, finding Dixon in a pretty 
temper from the interruption which a visitor had naturally 
occasioned on a busy day. She showed it by brushing away 
viciously at Margaret’s hair, under pretence of being in a 
great hurry to go to Mrs. Hale. Yet, after all, Margaret 
had to wait a long time in the drawing-room before her 
mother came down. She sat by herself at the fire, with un- 
lighted candles on the table behind her, thinking over the 
day, the happy walk, happy sketching, cheerful, pleasant 
dinner, and the uncomfortable, miserable walk in the garden. 

How different men were to women ! Here was she dis- 
turbed and unhappy, because her instinct had made any- 
thing but a refusal impossible ; while he, not many minutes 
after he had met with a rejection of what ought to have been 
the deepest, holiest proposal of his life, could speak as if 
briefs, success, and all its superficial consequences of a good 
house, clever and agreeable society, were the sole avowed 
objects of his desires. Oh dear ! how she could have loved 
him if he had but been different, with a difference which she 
felt, on reflection, to be one that went low — deep down. 
Then she took it into her head that, after all, his lightness 
might be but assumed, to cover a bitterness of disappoint- 
ment which would have been stamped on her own heart if 
she had loved and been rejected. 

33 


D 


North and South 

Her mother came into the room before this whirl of 
thoughts was adjusted into anything like order. Margaret 
had to shake off the recollections of what had been done and 
said through the day, and turn a sympathising listener to 
the account of how Dixon had complained that the ironing- 
blanket had been burnt again ; and how Susan Lightfoot 
had been seen with artificial flowers in her bonnet, thereby 
giving evidence of a vain and giddy character. Mr. Hale 
sipped his tea in abstracted silence ; Margaret had the 
responses all to herself. She wondered how her father and 
mother could be so forgetful, so regardless of their com- 
panion through the day, as never to mention his name. 
She forgot that he had not made them an offer. 

After tea Mr. Hale got up, and stood with his elbow on 
the chimney-piece, leaning his head on his hand, musing 
over something, and from time to time sighing deeply. Mrs. 
Hale went out to consult with Dixon about some winter 
clothing for the poor. Margaret was preparing her mother’s 
worsted work, and rather shrinking from the thought of the 
long evening, and wishing bedtime were come that she might 
go over the events of the day again. 

“ Margaret ! ” said Mr. Hale at last, in a sort of sudden 
desperate way, that made her start. “ Is that tapestry 
thing of immediate consequence ? I mean, can you leave it 
and come into my study ? I want to speak to you about 
something very serious to us all.” 

“ Very serious to us all.” Mr. Lennox had never had 
the opportunity of having any private conversation with her 
father after her refusal, or else that would indeed be a very 
serious affair. In the first place, Margaret felt guilty and 
ashamed of having grown so much into a woman as to be 
thought of in marriage ; and, secondly, she did not know if 
her father might not be displeased that she had taken upon 
herself to decline Mr. Lennox’s proposal. But she soon felt 
it was not about anything which, having only lately and 
suddenly occurred, could have given rise to any complicated 
thoughts that her father wished to speak to her. He made 

34 


Doubts and Difficulties 

her take a chair by him ; he stirred the fire, snuffed the 
candles, and sighed once or twice before he could make up 
his mind to say — and it came out with a jerk after all — 
“ Margaret ! I am going to leave Helstone.” 

“ Leave Helstone, papa ! But why ? ” 

Mr. Hale did not answer for a minute or two. He 
played with some papers on the table in a nervous and con- 
fused manner, opening his lips to speak several times, but 
closing them again without having the courage to utter a 
word. Margaret could not bear the sight of the suspense, 
which was even more distressing to her father than to herself. 

“ But why, dear papa ? Do tell me ! ” 

He looked up at her suddenly, and then said with a slow 
and enforced calmness — 

“ Because I must no longer be a minister in the Church 
of England.” 

Margaret had imagined nothing less than that some of 
the preferments which her mother had so much desired had 
befallen her father at last — something that would force him 
to leave beautiful, beloved Helstone, and perhaps compel 
him to go and five in some of the stately and silent Closes 
which Margaret had seen from time to time in Cathedral 
towns. They were grand and imposing places ; but if, to go 
there, it was necessary to leave Helstone as a home for ever, 
that would have been a sad, long, lingering pain. But 
nothing to the shock she received from Mr. Hale’s last 
speech. What could he mean ? It was all the worse for 
being so mysterious. The aspect of piteous distress on his 
face, almost as imploring a merciful and kind judgment from 
his child, gave her a sudden sickening. Could he have be- 
come implicated in anything Frederick had done ? Frederick 
was an outlaw. Had her father, out of a natural love for 
his son, connived at any — 

“ Oh ! what is it ? do speak, papa ! tell me all ! Why 
can you no longer be a clergyman ? Surely, if the bishop 
were told all we knew about Frederick, and the hard, 
unjust” 


35 . 


North and South 

“ It is nothing about Frederick ; the bishop would have 
nothing to do with that. It is all myself. Margaret, I will 
tell you about it. I will answer any questions this once, but 
after to-night let us never speak of it again. I can meet the 
consequences of my painful, miserable doubts ; but it is an 
effort beyond me to speak of what has caused me so much 
suffering.” 

“ Doubts, papa ! Doubts as to religion ? ” asked Mar- 
garet, more shocked than ever. 

“ No ! not doubts as to religion ; not the slightest injury 
to that.” 

He paused. Margaret sighed, as if standing on the 
verge of some new horror. He began again, speaking 
rapidly, as if to get over a set task — 

“ You could not understand it all, if I told you — my 
anxiety, for years past, to know whether I had any right to 
hold my living — my efforts to quench my smouldering doubts 
by the authority of the Church. Oh ! Margaret, how I love 
the holy Church from which I am to be shut out ! ” He 
could not go on for a moment or two. Margaret could not 
tell what to say ; it seemed to her as terribly mysterious as 
if her father were about to turn Mahometan. 

“ I have been reading to-day of the two thousand who 
were ejected from their churches,” continued Mr. Hale, 
smiling faintly, “trying to steal some of their bravery; 
but it is of no use — no use — I cannot help feeling it 
acutely.” 

“ But, papa, have you well considered ? Gh ! it seems so 
terrible, so shocking,” said Margaret, suddenly bursting into 
tears. The one staid foundation of her home, of her idea of 
her beloved father, seemed reeling and rocking. What could 
she say ? What was to be done ? The sight of her distress 
made Mr. Hale nerve himself, in order to try and comfort 
her. He swallowed down the dry, choking sobs which had 
been heaving up from his heart hitherto ; and, going to his 
bookcase he took down a volume, which he had often been 
reading lately, and from which he thought he had derived 

36 


Doubts and Difficulties 

strength to enter upon the course in which he was now 
embarked. 

“ Listen, dear Margaret,” said he, putting one arm round 
her waist. She took his hand in hers and grasped it tight, 
but she could not lift up her head ; nor indeed could she 
attend to what he read, so great was her internal agitation. 

“ This is the soliloquy of one who was once a clergyman 
in a country parish, like me ; it was written by Mr. Oldfield, 
minister of Carsington, in Derbyshire, a hundred and sixty 
years ago, or more. His trials are over. He fought the 
good fight.” These last two sentences he spoke low, as if to 
himself. Then he read aloud — 

“ When thou canst no longer continue in thy work with- 
out dishonour to God, discredit to religion, foregoing thy 
integrity, wounding conscience, spoiling thy peace, and 
hazarding the loss of thy salvation : in a word, when the 
conditions upon which thou must continue (if thou wilt 
continue) in thy employments are sinful, and unwarranted 
by the word of God, thou mayest, yea, thou must believe that 
God will turn thy very silence, suspension, deprivation, and 
laying aside, to His glory, and the advancement of the 
Gospel’s interest. When God will not use thee in one kind, 
yet He will in another. A soul that desires to serve and 
honour Him shall never want opportunity to do it ; nor 
must thou so limit the Holy One of Israel, as to think He 
hath but one way in which He can glorify Himself by thee. 
He can do it by thy silence as well as by thy preaching ; thy 
laying aside as well as thy continuance in thy work. It is 
not pretence of doing God the greatest service, or performing 
the weightiest duty, that will excuse the least sin, though 
that sin capacitated or gave us the opportunity for doing that 
duty. Thou wilt have little thanks, O my soul ! if when 
thou art charged with corrupting God’s worship, falsifying 
thy vows, thou pretendest a necessity for it in order to a 
continuance in the ministry.” 

As he read this, and glanced at much more which he did 
not read, he gained resolution for himself, and felt as if he 

37 


North and South 

too could be brave and firm in doing what he believed to be 
right ; but, as he ceased, he heard Margaret’s low convulsive 
sob; and his courage sank down under the keen sense of 
suffering. 

“ Margaret, dear ! ” said he, drawing her closer, “ think 
of the early martyrs ; think of the thousands who have 
suffered.” 

“ But, father,” said she, suddenly lifting up her flushed, 
tear- wet face, “ the early martyrs suffered for the truth, 
while you — oh ! dear, dear papa ! ” 

“ I suffer for conscience’ sake, my child,” said he, with a 
dignity that was only tremulous from the acute sensitiveness 
of his character ; “ I must do what my conscience bids. I 
have borne long with self-reproach that would have roused 
any mind less torpid and cowardly than mine.” He shook 
his head as he went on. “ Your poor mother’s fond wish, 
gratified at last in the mocking way in which over-fond 
wishes are too often fulfilled — Sodom apples as they are — 
has brought on this crisis, for which I ought to be, and I 
hope I am thankful. It is not a month since the bishop 
offered me another living ; if I had accepted it, I should have 
had to make a fresh declaration of conformity to the Liturgy 
at my institution. Margaret, I tried to do it ; I tried to con- 
tent myself with simply refusing the additional preferment, 
and stopping quietly here — strangling my conscience now, 
as I had strained it before. God forgive me ! ” 

He rose and walked up and down the room, speaking low 
words of self-reproach and humiliation, of which Margaret 
was thankful to hear but few. At last he said — 

“ Margaret, I return to the old sad burden : we must 
leave Helstone.” 

“ Yes ! I see. But when ? ” 

“ I have written to the bishop — I daresay I have told you 
so, but I forget things just now,” said Mr. Hale, collapsing 
into his depressed manner as soon as he came to talk of hard 
matter-of-fact details, “ informing him of my intention to 
resign this vicarage. He has been most kind ; he has used 

38 


Doubts and Difficulties 

arguments and expostulations, all in vain — in vain. They 
are but what I have tried upon myself, without avail. I 
shall have to take my deed of resignation, and wait upon 
the bishop myself, to bid him farewell. That will be a trial. 
But worse, far worse, will be the parting from my dear 
people. There is a curate appointed to read prayers — a Mr. 
Brown. He will come to stay with us to-morrow. Next 
Sunday I preach my farewell sermon.” 

Was it to be so sudden then ? thought Margaret ; and yet 
perhaps it was as well. Lingering would only add stings to 
the pain ; it was better to be stunned into numbness by hear- 
ing of all these arrangements, which seemed to be nearly 
completed before she had been told. “ What does mamma 
say ? ” asked she, with a deep sigh. 

To her surprise, her father began to walk about again 
before he answered. At length he stopped and replied— 

“ Margaret, I am a poor coward after all. I cannot bear 
to give pain. I know so well your mother’s married life has 
not been all she hoped — all she had a right to expect — and 
this will be such a blow to her, that I have never had the 
heart, the power to tell her. She must be told though, now,” 
said he, looking wistfully at his daughter. Margaret was 
almost overpowered with the idea that her mother knew 
nothing of it at all, and yet the affair was so far advanced ! 

“ Yes, indeed she must,” said Margaret. “ Perhaps, after 
all, she may not — Oh yes ! she will, she must be shocked ” 
— as the force of the blow returned upon herself in trying to 
realise how another would take it. “ Where are we to go 
to ? ” said she at last, struck with a fresh wonder as to then- 
future plans, if plans indeed her father had. 

“ To Milton- Northern,” he answered, with a dull in- 
difference ; for he had perceived that, although his daughter’s 
love had made her cling to him, and for a moment strive to 
soothe him with her love, yet the keenness of the pain was 
as fresh as ever in her mind. 

“ Milton-Northern ! The manufacturing town in Dark- 
shire?” 


39 


North and South 

“ Yes,” said he, in the same despondent, indifferent way. 

“ Why there, papa ? ” asked she. 

Because there I can earn bread for my family. Because 
I know no one there, and no one knows Helstone, or .can 
ever talk to me about it.” 

“ Bread for your family ! I thought you and mamma 
had ” — and then she stopped, checking her natural interest 
regarding their future life, as she saw the gathering gloom on 
her father’s brow. But he, with his quick intuitive sym- 
pathy, read in her face, as in a mirror, the reflections of his 
own moody depression, and turned it off with an effort. 

“ You shall be told all, Margaret. Only help me to tell 
your mother. I think I could do anything but that : the 
idea of her distress turns me sick with dread. If I tell you 
all, perhaps you could break it to her to-morrow. I am 
going out for the day, to bid farmer Dobson and the poor 
people on Bracy Common good-bye. Would you dislike 
breaking it to her very much, Margaret ? ” 

Margaret did ^dislike it, did shrink from it more than 
from anything she had ever had to do in her life before. She 
could not speak, all at once. Her father said, “ You dislike 
it very much, don’t you, Margaret ? ” Then she conquered 
herself, and said, with a bright strong look on her face — 

“ It is a painful thing, but it must be done, and I will do 
it as well as ever I can. You must have many painful 
things to do.” 

Mr. Hale shook his head despondingly : he pressed her 
hand in token of gratitude. Margaret was nearly upset 
again into a burst of crying. To turn her thoughts, she 
said — “ Now tell me, papa, what our plans are. You and 
mamma have some money, independent of the income from 
the living, have not you? Aunt Shaw has, I know.” 

“ Yes. I suppose we have about a hundred and seventy 
pounds a year of our own. Seventy of that has always gone 
to Frederick since he has been abroad. I don’t know if he 
wants it all,” he continued in a hesitating manner. “ He 
must have some pay for serving with the Spanish army.” 

40 


Doubts and Difficulties 

“ Frederick must not suffer,” said Margaret decidedly ; 
“ in a foreign country ; so unjustly treated by his own. A 
hundred is left. Could not you, and I, and mamma live on 
a hundred a year in some very cheap — very quiet part of 
England? Oh! I think we could.” 

“ No ! ” said Mr. Hale. “ That would not answer. I 
must do something. I must make myself busy, to keep off 
morbid thoughts. Besides, in a country parish I should be 
so painfully reminded of Helstone, and my duties here. I 
could not bear it, Margaret. And a hundred a year would 
go a very little way, after the necessary wants of house- 
keeping are met, towards providing your mother with all 
the comforts she has been accustomed to, and ought to have. 
No ; we must go to Milton. That is settled. I can always 
decide better by myself, and not influenced by those whom 
I love,” said he, as a half apology for having arranged so 
much before he had told any one of his family of his 
intentions. “ I cannot stand objections. They make me 
so undecided.” 

Margaret resolved to keep silence. After all, what did 
it signify where they went, compared to the one terrible 
change ? 

Mr. Hale continued : “ A few months ago, when my 
misery of doubt became more than I could bear without 
speaking, I wrote to Mr. Bell — you remember Mr. Bell, 
Margaret ? ” 

“ No : I never saw him, I think. But I know who he is. 
Frederick’s godfather — your old tutor at Oxford, don’t you 
mean ? ” 

“ Yes. He is a Fellow of Plymouth College there. He 
is a native of Milton -Northern, I believe. At any rate he 
has property there, which has very much increased in value 
since Milton has become such a large manufacturing town. 
Well; I had reason to suspect — to imagine — I had better 
say nothing about it, however. But I felt sure of sympathy 
from Mr. Bell. I don’t know that he gave me much 
strength. He has lived an easy life in his college all his 

4i 


North and South 

days. But he has been as kind as can be. And it is owing 
to him we are going to Milton.” 

“ How ? ” said Margaret. 

“ Why, he has tenants, and houses, and mills there ; so, 
though he dislikes the place — too bustling for one of his 
habits — he is obliged to keep up some sort of connection; 
and he ( tells me that he hears there is a good opening for 
a private tutor there.” 

“ A private tutor ! ” said Margaret, looking scornful : 
“ What in the world do manufacturers want with the classics, 
or literature, or the accomplishments of a gentleman ? ” 

“Oh,” said her father, “ some of them really seem to 
be fine fellows, conscious of their own deficiencies, which 
is more than many a man at Oxford is. Some want 
resolutely to learn, though they have come to man’s estate, 
Some want their children to be better instructed than 
they themselves have been. At any rate, there is an 
opening, as I have said, for a private tutor. Mr. Bell has 
recommended me to a Mr. Thornton, a tenant of his, and 
a very intelligent man, as far as I can judge from his letters. 
And in Milton, Margaret, I shall find a busy life, if not a 
happy one, and people and scenes so different that I shall 
never be reminded of Helstone.” 

There was the secret motive, as Margaret knew from 
her own feelings. It would be different. Discordant as it 
was — with almost a detestation for all she had ever heard 
of the North of England, the manufacturers, the people, the 
wild and bleak country — there was this one recommendation 
— it would be different from Helstone, and could never 
remind them of that beloved place. 

“ When do we go ? ” asked Margaret, after a short 
silence. 

“ I do not know exactly. I wanted to talk it over with 
you. You see, your mother knows nothing about it yet : 
but I think, in a fortnight ; — after my deed of resignation 
is sent in, I shall have no right to remain.” 

Margaret was almost stunned. 

42 


Doubts and Difficulties 

“ In a fortnight ! ” 

“ No — no, not exactly to a day. Nothing is fixed,” said 
her father, with anxious hesitation, as he noticed the filmy 
sorrow that came over her eyes, and the sudden change in 
her complexion. But she recovered herself immediately. 

“ Yes, papa, it had better be fixed soon and decidedly, as 
you say. Only mamma to know nothing about it ! It is 
that that is the great perplexity.” 

“ Poor Maria ! ” replied Mr. Hale tenderly. “ Poor, poor 
Maria ! Oh, if I were not married — if I were but myself in 
the world, how easy it would be ! As it is — Margaret, I dare 
not tell her ! ” 

“ No,” said Margaret sadly, “ I will do it. Give me till 
to-morrow evening to choose my time. Oh, papa,” cried she 
with sudden passionate entreaty, “ say — tell me it is a night- 
mare — a horrid dream — not the real waking truth ! You 
cannot mean that you are really going to leave the Church — 
to give up Helstone — to be for ever separate from me, from 
mamma — led away by some delusion — some temptation ! 
You do not really mean it ! ” 

Mr. Hale sat in rigid stillness while she spoke. 

Then he looked her in the face, and said in a slow, hoarse, 
measured way — “ I do mean it, Margaret. You must not 
deceive yourself into doubting the reality of my words — my 
fixed intention and resolve.” He looked at her in the same 
steady, stony manner, for some moments after he had done 
speaking. She, too, gazed back with pleading eyes before 
she would believe that it was irrevocable. Then she arose 
and went, without another word or look, towards the door. 
As her fingers were on the handle he called her back. He 
was standing by the fireplace, shrunk and stooping; but as 
she came near he drew himself up to his full height, and, 
placing his hands on her head, he said, solemnly — 

“ The blessing of God be upon thee, my child ! ’ 

“ And may He restore you to His Church,” responded she, 
out of the fulness of her heart. The next moment she feared 
lest this answer to his blessing might be irreverent, wrong — 

43 


North and South 

might hurt him as coming from his daughter, and she threw 
her arms round his neck. He held her to him for a minute 
or two. She heard him murmur to himself, “ The martyrs 
and confessors had even more pain to bear — I will not 
shrink.” 

They were startled by hearing Mrs. Hale inquiring for her 
daughter. They started asunder in the full consciousness of 
all that was before them. Mr. Hale hurriedly said, “ Go, 
Margaret, go. I shall be out all to-morrow. Before night 
you will have told your mother.” 

“ Yes,” she replied, and she returned to the drawing-room 
in a stunned and dizzy state. 


CHAPTEB V 

DECISION 

“ I ask Thee for a thoughtful love, 

Through constant watching wise, 

To meet the glad with joyful smiles, 

And to wipe the weeping eyes ; 

And a heart at leisure from itself 
To soothe and sympathise.” 

A. L. Waring. 

Margaret made a good listener to all her mother’s little 
plans for adding some small comforts to the lot of the poorer 
parishioners. She could not help listening, though each new 
project was a. stab to her heart. By the time the frost had 
set in, they should be far away from Helstone. Old Simon’s 
rheumatism might be bad and his eyesight worse ; there 
would be no one to go and read to him, and comfort him 
with little porringers of broth and good red flannel ; or if 
there was, it would be a stranger, and the old man would 
watch in vain for her. Mary Domville’s little crippled boy 
would crawl in vain to the door and look for her coming 

44 


Decision 

through the forest. These poor friends would never under- 
stand why she had forsaken them ; and there were many 
others besides. “ Papa has always spent the income he 
derived from his living in the parish. I am, perhaps, 
encroaching upon the next dues, but the winter is likely to 
be severe, and our poor old people must be helped.” 

“ Oh, mamma, let us do all we can,” said Margaret 
eagerly, not seeing the prudential side of the question, only 
grasping at the idea that they were rendering such help for 
the last time ; “we may not be here long.” 

“ Do you feel ill, my darling ? ” asked Mrs. Hale anxiously, 
misunderstanding Margaret’s hint of the uncertainty of their 
stay at Helstone. “ You look pale and tired. It is this soft, 
damp, unhealthy air.” 

“ No — no, mamma, it is not that : it is delicious air. It 
smells of the freshest, purest fragrance, after the smokiness of 
Harley Street. But I am tired : it surely must be near 
bedtime.” 

“ Not far off — it is half-past nine. You had better go to 
bed at once, dear. Ask Dixon for some gruel. I will come 
and see you as soon as you are in bed. I am afraid you 
have taken cold ; or the bad air from some of the stagnant 
ponds ” 

“ Oh, mamma,” said Margaret, faintly smiling as she 
kissed her mother, “ I am quite well — don’t alarm yourself 
about me ; I am only tired.” 

Margaret went upstairs. To soothe her mother’s anxiety 
she submitted to a basin of gruel. She was lying languidly 
in bed when Mrs. Hale came up to make some last inquiries 
and kiss her before going to her own room for the night. 
But the instant she heard her mother’s door locked, she 
sprang out of bed, and throwing her dressing-gown on, she 
began to pace up and down the room, until the creaking of 
one of the boards reminded her that she must make no noise. 
She went and curled herself up on the window-seat in the 
small, deeply-recessed window. That morning, when she 
had looked out, her heart had danced at seeing the bright, 

45 


North and South 

clear lights on the church tower, which foretold a fine and 
sunny day. This evening — sixteen hours at most had passed 
by — she sat down, too full of sorrow to cry, but with a dull 
cold pain, which seemed to have pressed the youth and 
buoyancy out of her heart, never to return. Mr. Henry 
Lennox’s visit — his offer — was like a dream, a thing beside 
her actual life. The hard reality was, that her father had so 
admitted tempting doubts into his mind as to become a 
schismatic — an outcast ; all the changes consequent upon 
this grouped themselves around that one great blighting 
fact. 

She looked out upon the dark-grey lines of the church 
towers, square and straight in the centre of the view, cutting 
against the deep blue transparent depths beyond, into which 
she gazed, and felt that she might gaze for ever, seeing at 
every moment some farther distance, and yet no sign of 
God ! It seemed to her at the moment, as if the earth was 
more utterly desolate than if girt in by an iron dome, behind 
which there might be the ineffaceable peace and glory of the 
Almighty ; those never-ending depths of space, in their 
still serenity, were more mocking to her than any material 
bounds could be — shutting in the cries of earth’s sufferers, 
which now might ascend into that infinite splendour of 
vastness and be lost — lost for ever, before they reached His 
throne. In this mood her father came in unheard. The 
moonlight was strong enough to let him see his daughter in 
her unusual place and attitude. He came to her and 
touched her shoulder before she was aware that he was 
there. 

“ Margaret, I heard you were up. I could not help 
coming in to ask you to pray with me — to say the Lord’s 
Prayer ; that will do good to both of us.” 

Mr. Hale and Margaret knelt by the window-seat — he 
looking up, she bowed down in humble shame. God was 
there, close around them, hearing her father’s whispered 
words. Her father might be a heretic ; but had not she, in 
her despairing doubts not five minutes before, shown herself 

46 


Decision 

a far more utter sceptic ? She spoke not a word, but stole to 
bed after her father had left her, like a child ashamed of its 
fault. If the world was full of perplexing problems she 
would trust, and only ask to see the one step needful for the 
hour. Mr. Lennox — his visit, his proposal — the remembrance 
of which had been so rudely pushed aside by the subsequent 
events of the day — haunted her dreams that night. He was 
climbing up some tree of fabulous height to reach the branch 
whereon was slung her bonnet ; he was falling and she was 
struggling to save him, but held back by some invisible 
powerful hand. He was dead. And yet, with a shifting of 
the scene, she was once more in the Harley Street drawing- 
room, talking to him as of old, and still with a consciousness 
all the time that she had seen him killed by that terrible 
fall. 

Miserable, unresting night ! Ill preparation for the 
coming day ! She awoke with a start, unrefreshed, and con- 
scious of some reality worse even than her feverish dreams. 
It all came back upon her ; not merely the sorrow, but the 
terrible discord in the sorrow. Where, to what distance 
apart, had her father wandered, led by doubts which were to 
her temptations of the Evil One ? She longed to ask, and 
yet would not have heard for all the world. 

The fine, crisp morning made her mother feel particularly 
well and happy at breakfast-time. She talked on, planning 
village kindnesses, unheeding the silence of her husband and 
the monosyllabic answers of Margaret. Before the things 
were cleared away, Mr. Hale got up ; he leaned one hand on 
the table, as if to support himself — 

“I shall not be at home till evening. I am going to 
Bracy Common, and will ask Farmer Dobson to give me 
something for dinner. I shall be back to tea at seven.” 

He did not look at either of them, but Margaret knew 
what he meant. By seven the announcement must be made 
to her mother. Mr. Hale would have delayed making it till 
half-past six, but Margaret was of different stuff. She could 
not bear the impending weight on her mind all the day long : 

47 


North and South 

better ge the worst over; the day would be too short to 
comfort her mother. But while she stood by the window, 
thinking how to begin, and waiting for the servant to have 
left the room, her mother had gone upstairs to put on her 
things to go to the school. She came down ready equipped, 
in a brisker mood than usual. 

“ Mother, come round the garden with me this morning ; 
just one turn,” said Margaret, putting her arm round Mrs. 
Hale’s waist. 

They passed through the open window. Mrs. Hale 
spoke — said something — Margaret could not tell what. Her 
eye caught on a bee entering a deep-belled flower : when 
that bee flew forth with his spoil she would begin — that 
should be the sign. Out he came. 

“ Mamma ! Papa is going to leave Helstone ! ” she 
blurted forth. “ He’s going to leave the Church, and live in 
Milton -Nor them.” There were the three hard facts hardly 
spoken. 

“ What makes you say so? ” asked Mrs. Hale, in a sur- 
prised incredulous voice. “ Who has been telling you such 
nonsense ? ” 

“ Papa himself,” said Margaret, longing to say something 
gentle and consoling, but literally not knowing how. They 
were close to a garden-bench. Mrs. Hale sat down and 
began to cry. 

“ I don’t understand you,” she said. “ Either you have 
made some great mistake, or I don’t quite understand you.” 

“No, mother, I have made no mistake. Papa has 
written to the bishop, saying that he has such doubts that he 
cannot conscientiously remain a priest of the Church of 
England, and that he must give up Helstone. He has also 
consulted Mr. Bell — Frederick’s godfather, you know, 
mamma; and it is arranged that we go to live in Milton- 
Northern.” Mrs. Hale looked up in Margaret’s face all the 
time she was speaking these words : the shadow on her 
countenance told that she, at least, believed in the truth of 
what she said. 


48 


Decision 

“ I don’t think it can be true,” said Mrs. Hale at length. 
“ He would surely have told me before it came to this.” 

It came strongly upon Margaret’s mind that her mother 
ought to have been told : that whatever her faults of discon- 
tent and repining might have been, it was an error in her 
father to have left her to learn his change of opinion, and his 
approaching change of life, from her better-informed child. 
Margaret sat down by her mother, and took her unresisting 
head on her breast, bending her own soft cheeks down 
caressingly to touch her face. 

“ Dear, darling mamma ! we were so afraid of giving you 
pain. Papa felt so acutely — you know you are not strong, 
and there must have been such terrible suspense to go 
through.” 

“ When did he tell you, Margaret ? ” 

“Yesterday, only yesterday,” replied Margaret, detecting 
the jealousy which prompted the inquiry. “ Poor papa ! ” — 
trying to divert her mother’s thoughts into compassionate 
sympathy for all her father had gone through. Mrs. Hale 
raised her head. 

“ What does he mean by having doubts ? ” she asked. 
“ Surely, he does not mean that he thinks differently — that 
he knows better than the Church ? ” 

Margaret shook her head, and the tears came into her 
eyes, as her mother touched the bare nerve of her own 
regret. 

“ Can’t the bishop set him right ? ” asked Mrs. Hale, half 
impatiently. 

“ I’m afraid not,” said Margaret. “ But I did not ask. 
I could not bear to hear what he might answer. It is all 
settled at any rate. He is going to leave Helstone in a fort- 
night. I am not sure if he did not say he had sent in his 
deed of resignation.” 

“In a fortnight ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Hale, “ I do think this 
is very strange — not at all right. I call it very unfeeling,” 
said she, beginning to take relief in tears. “ He has doubts, 
you say, and gives up his living, and all without consulting 

49 E 


North and South 

me. I daresay, if he had told me his doubts at the first I 
could have nipped them in the bud.” 

Mistaken as Margaret felt her father’s conduct to have 
been, she could not bear to hear it blamed by her mother. 
She knew that his very reserve had originated in a tender- 
ness for her, which might be cowardly, but was not 
unfeeling. 

“ I almost hoped you might have been glad to leave 
Helstone, mamma,” said she, after a pause. “ You have 
never been well in this air, you know.” 

“ You can’t think the smoky air of a manufacturing town, 
all chimneys and dirt like Milton- Northern, would be better 
than this air, which is pure and sweet, if it is too soft and 
relaxing. Fancy living in the middle of factories, and factory 
people ! Though, of course, if your father leaves the Church, 
we shall not be admitted into society anywhere. It will be 
such a disgrace to us ! Poor dear Sir John ! It is well he 
is not alive to see what your father has come to ! Every day 
after dinner, when I was a girl, living with your Aunt Shaw, 
at Beresford Court, Sir John used to give for the first toast — 
‘ Church and King, and down with the Bump.’ ” 

Margaret was glad that her mother’s thoughts were 
turned away from the fact of her husband’s silence to her on 
the point which must have been so near his heart. Next 
to the serious vital anxiety as to the nature of her father’s 
doubts, this was the one circumstance of the case that gave 
Margaret the most pain. 

“ You know, we have very little society here, mamma. 
The Gormans, who are our nearest neighbours (to call society 
— and we hardly ever see them), have been in trade just as 
much as these Milton- Northern people.” 

“ Yes,” said Mrs. Hale, almost indignantly, “ but, at any 
rate, the Gormans made carriages for half the gentry of the 
county, and were brought into some kind of intercourse with 
them ; but these factory people — who on earth wears cotton 
that can afford linen ? ” 

“ Well, mamma, I give up the cotton-spinners ; I am not 

5 ° 


Decision 

standing np for them, any more than for any other trades- 
people. Only we shall have little enough to do with them.” 

“ Why on earth has your father fixed on Milton-Northern 
to live in ? ” 

“ Partly,” said Margaret, sighing, “ because it is so very 
different from Helstone — partly because Mr. Bell says there 
is an opening there for a private tutor.” 

“ Private tutor in Milton ! Why can’t he go to Oxford, 
and be a tutor to gentlemen ? ” 

“ You forget, mamma ! He is leaving the Church on 
account of his opinions — his doubts would do him no good at 
Oxford.” 

“ Mrs. Hale was silent for some time, quietly crying. At 
last she said — 

“ And the furniture — How in the world are we to manage 
the removal ? I never removed in my life, and only a fort- 
night to think about it ! ” 

Margaret was inexpressibly relieved to find that her 
mother’s anxiety and distress was lowered to this point, so 
insignificant to herself, and on which she could do so much 
to help. She planned and promised, and led her mother on 
to arrange fully as much as could be fixed before they knew 
somewhat more definitively what Mr. Hale intended to do. 
Throughout the day Margaret never left her mother ; bending 
her whole soul to sympathise in all the various turns her 
feelings took; towards evening especially, as she became 
more and more anxious that her father should find a sooth- 
ing welcome home awaiting him, after his return from his 
day of fatigue and distress. She dwelt upon what he must 
have borne in secret for long ; her mother only replied coldly 
that he ought to have told her, and that then at any rate he 
would have had an adviser to give him counsel ; and Mar- 
garet turned faint at heart when she heard her father’s step 
in the hall. She dared not go to meet him, and tell him 
what she had done all day, for fear of her mother’s jealous 
annoyance. She heard him finger, as if awaiting her, or 
some sign of her ; and she dared not stir ; she saw by her 

5 1 


North and South 

mother’s twitching lips, and changing colour, that she too 
was aware that her husband had returned. Presently he 
opened the room-door, and stood there uncertain whether to 
come in. His face was grey and pale; he had a timid, 
fearful look in his eyes ; something almost pitiful to see in a 
man’s face; but that look of despondent uncertainty, of 
mental and bodily languor, touched his wife’s heart. She 
went to him, and threw herself on his breast, crying out — 

“ Oh ! Eichard, Richard, you should have told me 
sooner ! ” 

And then, in tears, Margaret left her, as she rushed 
upstairs to throw herself on her bed, and hide her face in the 
pillows to stifle the hysteric sobs that would force their way 
at last, after the rigid self-control of the whole day. 

How long she lay thus she could not tell. She heard no 
noise, though the housemaid came in to arrange the room. 
The affrighted girl stole out again on tip-toe, and went and 
told Mrs. Dixon that Miss Hale was crying as if her heart 
would break : she was sure she would make herself deadly ill 
if she went on at that rate. In consequence of this, Mar- 
garet felt herself touched, and started up into a sitting 
posture ; she saw the accustomed room, the figure of Dixon 
in shadow, as the latter stood holding the candle a little 
behind her, for fear of the effect on Miss Hale’s startled eyes, 
swollen and blinded as they were. 

“ Oh, Dixon ! I did not hear you come into the room ! ” 
said Margaret, resuming her trembling self-restraint. “ Is it 
very late ? ” continued she, lifting herself languidly off the 
bed, yet letting her feet touch the ground without fairly 
standing down, as she shaded her wet, ruffled hair off her 
face, and tried to look as though nothing were the matter ; 
as if she had only been asleep. 

“ I hardly can tell what time it is,” replied Dixon, in an 
aggrieved tone of voice. “ Since your mamma told me this 
terrible news, when I dressed her for tea, I’ve lost all count 
of time. I’m sure I don’t know what is to become of us all. 
When Charlotte told me just now you were sobbing, Miss 

52 


Decision 

Hale, I thought, no wonder, poor thing ! And master think- 
ing of turning Dissenter at his time of life, when, if it is not 
to be said he’s done well in the Church, he’s not done badly 
after all. I had a cousin, miss, who turned Methodist 
preacher after he was fifty years of age, and a tailor all his 
life ; but then he had never been able to make a pair of 
trousers to fit, for as long as he had been in the trade, so it 
was no wonder ; but for master ! As I said to missus, 
‘ What would poor Sir John have said ? he never liked your 
marrying Mr. Hale, but if he could have known it would 
have come to this, he would have sworn worse oaths than 
ever, if that was possible ! ’ ” 

Dixon had been so much accustomed to comment upon 
Mr. Hale’s proceedings to her mistress (who listened to her, 
or not, as she was in the humour), that she never noticed 
Margaret’s flashing eye and dilating nostril. To hear her 
father talked of in this way by a servant to her face ! 

“ Dixon,” she said, in the low tone she always used when 
much excited, which had a sound in it as of some distant 
turmoil, or threatening storm breaking far away. “ Dixon ! 
you forget to whom you are speaking.” She stood upright 
and firm on her feet now, confronting the waiting-maid, and 
fixing her with her steady discerning eye. “I am Mr. Hale’s 
daughter. Go ! You have made a strange mistake, and one 
that I am sure your own good feeling will make you sorry for 
when you think about it.” 

Dixon hung irresolutely about the room for a minute or 
two. Margaret repeated, “You may leave me, Dixon. I 
wish you to go.” Dixon did not know whether to resent 
these decided words or to cry ; either course would have 
done with her mistress ; but, as she said to herself, “ Miss 
Margaret has a touch of the old gentleman about her, as 
well as poor Master Frederick ; I wonder where they get it 
from ? ” and she, who would have resented such words from 
any one less haughty and determined in manner, was subdued 
enough to say, in a half-humble, half-injured tone — 

“ Mayn’t I unfasten your gown, miss, and do your hair ? ” 

53 


North and South 

“ No ! not to-night, thank yon.” And Margaret gravely 
lighted her out of the room, and bolted the door. From 
henceforth Dixon obeyed and admired Margaret. She said 
it was because she was so like poor Master Frederick ; but 
the truth was, that Dixon, as do many others, liked to feel 
herself ruled by a powerful and decided nature. 

Margaret needed all Dixon’s help in action, and silence 
in words ; for, for some time, the latter thought it her duty 
to show her sense of affront by saying as little as possible to 
her young lady ; so the energy came out in doing rather 
than in speaking. A fortnight was a very short time to 
make arrangements for so serious a removal ; as Dixon said, 
“ Any one but a gentleman — indeed almost any other gentle- 
man ” but, catching a look at Margaret’s straight, stern 

brow just here, she coughed the remainder of the sentence 
away, and meekly took the horehound drop that Margaret 
offered her, to stop the “ little tickling at my chest, miss.” 
But almost any one but Mr. Hale would have had practical 
knowledge enough to see, that in so short a time it would 
be difficult to fix on any house in Milton-Northern, or indeed 
elsewhere, to which they could remove the furniture that had 
of necessity to be taken out of Helstone Vicarage. 

Mrs. Hale, overpowered by all the troubles and neces- 
sities for immediate household decisions that seemed to come 
upon her at once, became really ill, and Margaret almost felt 
it as a relief when her mother fairly took to her bed, and left 
the management of affairs to her. Dixon, true to her post 
of body-guard, attended most faithfully to her mistress, and 
only emerged from Mrs. Hale’s bedroom to shake her head, and 
murmur to herself in a manner which Margaret did not choose 
to hear. For, the one thing clear and straight before her was 
the necessity for leaving Helstone. Mr. Hale’s successor in 
the living was appointed ; and, at any rate, after her father’s 
decision, there must be no lingering now, for his sake, as 
well as from every other consideration. For he came home 
every evening more and more depressed, after the necessary 
leave-taking which he had resolved to have with every 

54 


Decision 

individual parishioner. Margaret, inexperienced as she was in 
all the necessary matter-of-fact business to be got through, 
did not know to whom to apply for advice. The cook and 
Charlotte worked away with willing arms and stout hearts 
at all the moving and packing ; and, as far as that went, 
Margaret’s admirable sense enabled her to see what was 
best, and to direct how it should be done. But where were 
they to go to ? In a week they must be gone. Straight to 
Milton, or where ? So many arrangements depended on this 
decision that Margaret resolved to ask her father one 
evening, in spite of his evident fatigue and low spirits. He 
answered — • 

“ My dear ! I have really had too much to think about 
to settle this. What does your mother say ? What does she 
wish ? Poor Maria ! ” 

He met with an echo even louder than his sigh. Dixon 
had just come into the room for another cup of tea for Mrs. 
Hale, and catching Mr. Hale’s last words, and protected by 
his presence from Margaret’s upbraiding eyes, made bold to 
say, “ My poor mistress ! ” 

“ You don’t think her worse to-day,” said Mr. Hale, 
turning hastily. 

“ I am sure I can’t say, sir. It’s not for me to judge. 
The illness seems so much more on the mind than on the 
body.” 

Mr. Hale looked infinitely distressed. 

“ You had better take mamma her tea while it is hot, 
Dixon,” said Margaret, in a tone of quiet authority. 

“ Oh ! I beg your pardon, miss ! My thoughts was 
otherwise occupied in thinking of my poor of Mrs. Hale.” 

“ Papa ! ” said Margaret, “ it is this suspense that is bad 
for you both. Of course, mamma must feel your change of 
opinions; we can’t help that,” she continued softly; “but 
now the course is clear, at least to a certain point. And I 
think, papa, that I could get mamma to help me in planning, 
if you could tell me what to plan for. She has never ex- 
pressed any wish in any way, and only thinks of what can’t 

55 


North and South 

be helped. Are we to go straight to Milton? Have you 
taken a house there ? ” 

“ No,” he replied. “ I suppose we must go into lodgings, 
and look about for a house.” 

“ And pack up the furniture so that it can be left at the 
railway station, till we have met with one ? ” 

“ I suppose so. Do what you think best. Only remember, 
we shall have much less money to spend.” 

They had never had much superfluity, as Margaret knew. 
She felt that it was a great weight suddenly thrown upon 
her shoulders. Four months ago, all the decisions she 
needed to make were what dress she would wear for dinner, 
and to help Edith to draw out the lists of who should take 
down whom in the dinner parties at home. Nor was the 
household in which she lived one that called for much 
decision. Except in the one grand case of Captain Lennox’s 
offer, everything went on with the regularity of clockwork. 
Once a year, there was a long discussion between her aunt 
and Edith as to whether they should go to the Isle of Wight, 
abroad, or to Scotland ; but at such times Margaret herself 
was secure of drifting, without any exertion of her own, into 
the quiet harbour of home. Now, since that day when Mr. 
Lennox came, and startled her into a decision, every day 
brought some question, momentous to her, and to those 
whom she loved, to be settled. 

Her father went up after tea to sit with his wife. Mar- 
garet remained alone in the drawing-room. Suddenly she 
took a candle and went into her father’s study for a great 
atlas, and, lugging it back into the drawing-room, she began 
to pore over the map of England. She was ready to look 
up brightly when her father came downstairs. 

“ I have hit upon such a beautiful plan. Look here — in 
Darkshire, hardly the breadth of my finger from Milton, is 
Heston, which I have often heard of from people living in 
the north as such a pleasant little bathing-place. Now, 
don’t you think we could get mamma there with Dixon, 
while you and I go and look at houses, and get one all ready 

5 6 


Decision 

for her in Milton ? She would get a breath of sea air to set 
her up for the winter, and be spared all the fatigue, and 
Dixon would enjoy taking care of her.” 

“ Is Dixon to go with us ? ” asked Mr. Hale, in a kind of 
helpless dismay. 

“ Oh, yes ! ” said Margaret. “ Dixon quite intends it, and 
I don’t know what mamma would do without her.” 

“ But we shall have to put up with a very different way 
of living, I am afraid. Everything is so much dearer in a 
town. I doubt if Dixon can make herself comfortable. To 
tell you the truth, Margaret, I sometimes feel as if that 
woman gave herself airs.” 

“ To be sure she does, papa,” replied Margaret ; “ and if 
she has to put up with a different style of living, we shall 
have to put up with her airs, which will be worse. But she 
really loves us all, and would be miserable to leave us, I am 
sure — especially in this change ; so, for mamma’s sake, and 
for the sake of her faithfulness, I do think she must go.” 

“Very well, my dear. Go on. I am resigned. How 
far is Heston from Milton ? The breadth of one of your 
fingers does not give me a very clear idea of distance.” 

“ Well, then, I suppose it is thirty miles ; that is not 
much ! ” 

“ Not in distance, but in — . Never mind ! If you really 
think it will do your mother good, let it be fixed so.” 

This was a great step. Now Margaret could work, and act, 
and plan in good earnest. And now Mrs. Hale could rouse 
herself from her languor, and forget her real suffering in 
thinking of the pleasure and the delight of going to the 
seaside. Her only regret was that Mr. Hale could not be 
with her all the fortnight she was to be there, as he had 
been for a whole fortnight once, when they were engaged, 
and she was staying with Sir John and Lady Beresford at 
Torquay. 


57 


North and South 


CHAPTER VI 

FAREWELL 

** Unwatch’d the garden bough shall sway, 

The tender blossom flutter down, 

Unloved that beech will gather brown, 

The maple bum itself away ; 

Unloved the sun-flower, shining fair, 

Ray round with flames her disk of seed, 

And many a rose carnation feed 
With summer spice the humming air ; 

Till from the garden and the wild 
A fresh association blow 
And year by year the landscape grow 
Familiar to the stranger’s child ; 

As year by year the labourer tills 

His wonted glebe, or lops the glades ; 

And year by year our memory fades 
From all the circle of the hills.” 

Tennyson. 

The last day came; the house was full of packing-cases, 
which were being carted off, at the front door, to the nearest 
railway station. Even the pretty lawn at the side of the house 
was made unsightly and untidy by the straw that had been 
wafted upon it through the open door and windows. The 
rooms had a strange echoing sound in them — and the light 
came harshly and strongly in through the uncurtained 
windows — seeming already unfamiliar and strange. Mrs. 
Hale’s dressing-room was left untouched to the last; and 
there she and Dixon were packing up clothes, and inter- 
rupting each other every now and then to exclaim at, and 
turn over with fond regard some forgotten treasure, in the 
shape of some relic of the children while they were yet little. 
They did not make much progress with their work. Down- 
stairs, Margaret stood calm and collected, ready to counsel or 

58 


Farewell 

advise the men who had been called in to help the cook and 
Charlotte. These two last, crying between whiles, wondered 
how the young lady could keep up so this last day, and 
settled it between them that she was not likely to care much 
for Helstone, having been so long in London. There she 
stood, very pale and quiet, with her large grave eyes observing 
everything — up to every present circumstance, however 
small. They could not understand how her heart was 
aching all the time, with a heavy pressure that no sighs 
could lift off or relieve, and how constant exertion for her per- 
ceptive faculties was the only way to keep herself from crying 
out with pain. Moreover, if she gave way, who was to act ? 
Her father was examining papers, books, registers, what not, 
in the vestry with the clerk ; and when he came in, there 
were his own books to pack up, which no one but himself 
could do to his satisfaction. Besides, was Margaret one to 
give way before strange men, or even household friends like 
the cook and Charlotte ? Not she ! But at last the four 
packers went into the kitchen to their tea ; and Margaret 
moved stiffly and slowly away from the place in the hall 
where she had been standing so long, out through the bare 
echoing drawing-room, into the twilight of an early 
November evening. There was a filmy veil of soft dull 
mist obscuring, but not hiding, all objects, giving them a 
lilac hue, for the sun had not yet fully set ; a robin was 
singing — perhaps, Margaret thought, the very robin that her 
father had so often talked of as his winter pet, and for which 
he had made, with his own hands, a kind of robin-house by 
his study- window. The leaves were more gorgeous than 
ever ; the first touch of frost would lay them all low on the 
ground. Already one or two kept constantly floating down, 
amber -and golden in the low slanting sun-rays. 

Margaret went along the walk under the pear-tree wall. 
She had never been along it since she paced it at Henry 
Lennox’s side. Here, at this bed of thyme, he began to 
speak of what she must not think of now. Her eyes were 
on that late-blowing rose as she was trying to answer ; and 

59 


North and South 

she had caught the idea of the vivid beauty of the feathery 
leaves of the carrots in the very middle of his last sentence. 
Only a fortnight ago ! And all so changed ! Where was he 
now ? In London — going through the old round ; dining 
with the old Harley Street set, or with gayer young friends 
of his own. Even now, while she walked sadly through that 
damp and drear garden in the dusk, with everything falling 
and fading, and turning to decay around her, he might be 
gladly putting away his law-books after a day of satisfactory 
toil, and freshening himself up, as he had told her he often 
did, by a run in the Temple Gardens, taking in the while the 
grand inarticulate mighty roar of tens of thousands of busy 
men, nigh at hand, but not seen, and catching ever, at his 
quick turns, glimpses of the lights of the city coming up out 
of the depths of the river. He had often spoken to Margaret 
of these hasty walks, snatched in the intervals between study 
and dinner. At his best times and in his best moods had he 
spoken of them ; and the thought of them had struck upon her 
fancy. Here there was no sound. The robin had gone away 
into the vast stillness of night. Now and then, a cottage 
door in the distance was opened and shut, as if to admit the 
tired labourer to his home ; but that sounded very far away. 
A stealthy, creeping, cranching sound among the crisp fallen 
leaves of the forest, beyond the garden, seemed almost close 
at hand. Margaret knew it was some poacher. Sitting up 
in her bedroom this past autumn, with the light of her 
candle extinguished, and purely revelling in the solemn 
beauty of the heavens and the earth, she had many a time 
seen the light, noiseless leap of the poachers over the garden- 
fence, their quick tramp across the dewy moonlit lawn, their 
disappearance in the black still shadow beyond. The wild, 
adventurous freedom of their life had taken her fancy ; she 
felt inclined to wish them success ; she had no fear of them. 
But to-night she was afraid, she knew not why. She heard 
Charlotte shutting the windows, and fastening up for the 
night, unconscious that any one had gone out into the 
garden. A small branch — it might be of rotten wood, or it 

60 


Farewell 

might be broken by force — came heavily down in the 
nearest part of the forest ; Margaret ran, swift as Camilla, 
down to the window, and rapped at it with a hurried 
tremulousness which startled Charlotte within. 

“ Let me in ! Let me in ! It is only me, Charlotte ! ” 
Her heart did not still its fluttering till she was safe in the 
drawing-room, with the windows fastened and bolted, and 
the familiar walls hemming her round, and shutting her in. 
She had sate down upon a packing-case ; cheerless, chill was 
the dreary and dismantled room — no fire, nor other light, 
but Charlotte’s long unsnuffed candle. Charlotte looked at 
Margaret with surprise ; and Margaret, feeling it rather than 
seeing it, rose up. 

“ I was afraid you were shutting me out altogether, 
Charlotte,” said she, half-smiling. “ And then you would 
never have heard me in the kitchen, and the doors into the 
lane and churchyard are locked long ago.” 

“ Oh, miss, I should have been sure to have missed you 
soon. The men would have wanted you to tell them how to 
go on. And I have put tea in master’s study, as being the 
most comfortable room, so to speak.” 

“ Thank you, Charlotte. You are a kind girl. I shall be 
sorry to leave you. You must try and write to me, if I can 
ever give you any little help or good advice. I shall always 
be glad to get a letter from Helstone, you know. I shall be 
sure and send you my address when I know it.” 

The study was all ready for tea. There was a good 
blazing fire, and unlighted candles on the table. Margaret 
sat down on the rug, partly to warm herself, for the damp- 
ness of the evening hung about her dress, and over-fatigue 
had made her chilly. She kept herself balanced by clasping 
her hands together round her knees; her head dropped a 
little towards her chest ; the attitude was one of despondency, 
whatever her frame of mind might be. But when she heard 
her father’s step on the gravel outside, she started up, and, 
hastily shaking her heavy black hair back, and wiping a few 
tears away that had come on her cheeks she knew not how, 

61 


North and South 

she went out to open the door for him. He showed far 
more depression than she did. She could hardly get him to 
talk, although she tried to speak on subjects that would 
interest him, at the cost of an effort every time which she 
thought would be her last. 

“ Have you been a very long walk to-day ? ” asked she, 
on seeing his refusal to touch food of any kind. 

“ As far as Fordham Beeches. I went to see Widow 
Maltby ; she is sadly grieved at not having wished you good- 
bye. She says little Susan has kept watch down the lane 
for days past. — Nay, Margaret, what is the matter, dear ? ” 
The thought of the little child watching for her, and con- 
tinually disappointed — from no forgetfulness on her part, 
but from sheer inability to leave home — was the last drop in 
poor Margaret’s cup, and she was sobbing away as if her 
heart would break. Mr. Hale was distressingly perplexed. He 
rose, and walked nervously up and down the room. Margaret 
tried to check herself, but would not speak until she could 
do so with firmness. She heard him talking, as if to himself. 

“ I cannot bear it. I cannot bear to see the sufferings of 
others. I think I could go through my own with patience. 
Oh, is there no going back ? ” 

“ No, father,” said Margaret, looking straight at him, and 
speaking low and steadily. “It is bad to believe you in 
error. It would be infinitely worse to have known you a 
hypocrite.” She dropped her voice at the last few words, as 
if entertaining the idea of hypocrisy for a moment in con- 
nection with her father savoured of irreverence. 

“ Besides,” she went on, “ it is only that I am tired 
to-night ; don’t think that I am suffering from what you 
have done, dear papa. We can’t either of us talk about it 
to-night, I believe,” said she, finding that tears and sobs 
would come in spite of herself. “ I had better go and take 
mamma up this cup of tea. She had hers very early, when 
I was too busy to go to her, and I am sure she will be glad 
of another now.” 

Railroad time inexorably wrenched them away from 
62 


Farewell 

lovely, beloved Helstone, the next morning. They were 
gone; they had seen the last of the long, low parsonage 
home, half-covered with China-roses and pyracanthus — more 
homelike than ever in the morning sun that glittered on its 
windows, each belonging to some well-loved room. Almost 
before they had settled themselves into the car, sent from 
Southampton to fetch them to the station, they were gone 
away to return no more. A sting at Margaret’s heart made 
her strive to look out to catch the last glimpse of the old 
church tower at the turn where she knew it might be seen 
above a wave of the forest trees ; but her father remembered 
this too, and she silently acknowledged his greater right to 
the one window from which it could be seen. She leant 
back and shut her eyes, and the tears welled forth, and hung 
glittering for an instant on the shadowing eyelashes before 
rolling slowly down her cheeks, and dropping, unheeded, on 
her dress. 

They were to stop in London all night at some quiet 
hotel. Poor Mrs. Hale had cried in her way nearly all day 
long ; and Dixon showed her sorrow by extreme crossness, 
and a continual irritable attempt to keep her petticoats from 
even touching the unconscious Mr. Hale, whom she regarded 
as the origin of all this suffering. 

They went through the well-known streets, past houses 
which they had often visited, past shops in which she had 
lounged, impatient, by her aunt’s side, while that lady was 
making some important and interminable decision — nay, 
absolutely past acquaintances in the streets ; for, though the 
morning had been of an incalculable length to them, and 
they felt as if it ought long ago to have closed in for the 
repose of darkness, it was the very busiest time of a London 
afternoon in November when they arrived there. It was 
long since Mrs. Hale had been in London ; and she roused 
up, almost like a child, to look about her at the different 
streets, and to gaze after and exclaim at the shops and 
carriages — 

“ Oh, there’s Harrison’s, where I bought so many of my 

63 


North and South 

wedding things. Dear ! how altered ! They’ve got immense 
plate-glass windows, larger than Crawford’s in Southampton. 
Oh, and there, I declare — no, it is not — yes, it is — Margaret, 
we have just passed Mr. Henry Lennox. Where can he be 
going, among all these shops ? ” 

Margaret started forwards, and as quickly fell back, half- 
smiling at herself for the sudden motion. They were a 
hundred yards away by this time ; but he seemed like a 
relic of Helstone — he was associated with a bright morning, 
an eventful day, and she should have liked to have seen 
him, without his seeing her — without the chance of their 
speaking. 

The evening, without employment, passed in a room high 
up in an hotel, was long and heavy. Mr. Hale went out to 
his bookseller’s, and to call on a friend or two. Every one 
they saw, either in the house or out in the streets, appeared 
hurrying to some appointment, expected by, or expecting 
somebody. They alone seemed strange and friendless, and 
desolate. Yet within a mile, Margaret knew of house after 
house, where she for her own sake, and her mother for her 
aunt Shaw’s, would be welcomed, if they came in gladness, 
or even in peace of mind. If they came sorrowing, and 
wanting sympathy in a complicated trouble like the present, 
then they would be felt as a shadow in all these houses 
of intimate acquaintances, not friends. London life is too 
whirling and full to admit of even an hour of that deep 
silence of feeling which the friends of Job showed, when 
“ they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven 
nights, and none spake a word unto him ; for they saw that 
his grief was very great.’* 


64 


New Scenes and Faces 


CHAPTER VII 

NEW SCENES AND FACES 

“ Mist clogs the sunshino. 

Smoky dwarf houses 
Hem me round everywhere.” 

Matthew Arnold. 

The next afternoon, about twenty miles from Milton- Northern, 
they entered on the little branch railway that led to Heston. 
Heston itself was one long straggling street, running parallel 
to the sea-shore. It had a character of its own, as different 
from the little bathing-places in the south of England as they 
again from those of the Continent. To use a Scotch word, 
everything looked more “ purpose-like.” The country carts 
had more iron, and less wood and leather about the horse- 
gear ; the people in the streets, although on pleasure bent, 
had yet a busy mind. The colours looked greyer — more 
enduring, not so gay and pretty. There were no smock- 
frocks, even among the country-folk ; they retarded motion, 
and were apt to catch on machinery, and so the habit of 
wearing them had died out. In such towns in the south 
of England, Margaret had seen the shopmen, when not 
employed in their business, lounging a little at their doors, 
enjoying the fresh air, and the look up and down the street. 
Here, if they had any leisure from customers, they made 
themselves business in the shop — even, Margaret fancied, 
to the unnecessary unrolling and re-rolling of ribbons. All 
these differences struck upon her mind, as she and her 
mother went out next morning to look for lodgings. 

Their two nights at hotels had cost more than Mr. Hale 
had anticipated, and they were glad to take the first clean, 
cheerful rooms they met with that were at liberty to receive 
them. There, for the first time for many days, did Margaret 
feel at rest. There was a dreaminess in the rest, too, which 

65 F 


North and South 

made it still more perfect and luxurious to repose in. The 
distant sea, lapping the sandy shore with measured sound ; 
the nearer cries of the donkey-boys ; the unusual scenes 
moving before her like pictures, which she cared not in her 
laziness to have fully explained before they passed away; 
the stroll down to the beach to breathe the sea-air, soft and 
warm on that sandy shore even to the end of November ; 
the great long misty sea-line touching the tender- coloured 
sky ; the white sail of a distant boat turning silver in some 
pale sunbeam : — it seemed as if she could dream her life 
away in such luxury of pensiveness, in which she made her 
present all in all, from not daring to think of the past, or 
wishing to contemplate the future. 

But the future must be met, however stem and iron it be. 
One evening it was arranged that Margaret and her father 
should go the next day to Milton-Northern, and look out 
for a house. Mr. Hale had received several letters from 
Mr. Bell, and one or two from Mr. Thornton, and he was 
anxious to ascertain at once a good many particulars respect- 
ing his position and chances of success there, which he could 
only do by an interview with the latter gentleman. Margaret 
knew that they ought to be removing ; but she had a repug- 
nance to the idea of a manufacturing town, and believed that 
her mother was receiving benefit from Heston air; so she 
would willingly have deferred the expedition to Milton. 

For several miles before they reached Milton, they saw 
a deep lead-coloured cloud hanging over the horizon in the 
direction in which it lay. It was all the darker from contrast 
with the pale grey-blue of the wintry sky; for in Heston 
there had been the earliest signs of frost. Nearer to the 
town, the air had a faint taste and smell of smoke ; perhaps, 
after all, more a loss of the fragrance of grass and herbage 
than any positive taste or smell. Quickly they were whirled 
over long, straight, hopeless streets of regularly-built houses, 
all small and of brick. Here and there a great oblong 
many-windowed factory stood up, like a hen among her 
chickens, puffing out black “unparliamentary” smoke, and 

66 


New Scenes and Faces 

sufficiently accounting for the cloud which Margaret had 
taken to foretell rain. As they drove through the larger and 
wider streets, from the station to the hotel, they had to stop 
constantly ; great loaded lurries blocked up the not over- wide 
thoroughfares. Margaret had now and then been into the 
city in her drives with her aunt. But there the . heavy 
lumbering vehicles seemed various in their purposes and 
intent ; here every van, every waggon and truck, bore cotton, 
either in the raw shape in bags, or the woven shape in bales 
of calico. People thronged the footpaths, most of them 
well-dressed as regarded the material, but with a slovenly 
looseness which struck Margaret as different from the shabby, 
threadbare smartness of a similar class in London. 

“New Street,” said Mr. Hale. “ This, I believe, is the 
principal street in Milton. Bell has often spoken to me 
about it. It was the opening of this street from a lane into 
a great thoroughfare, thirty years ago, which has caused his 
property to rise so much in value. Mr. Thornton’s mill 
must be somewhere not very far off, for he is Mr. Bell’s 
tenant. But I fancy he dates from his warehouse.” 

“ Where is our hotel, papa ? ” 

“ Close to the end of this street, I believe. Shall we 
have lunch before or after we have looked at the houses 
we marked in the Milton Times ? ” 

“ Oh, let us get our work done first.” 

“ Very well. Then I will only see if there is any note 
or letter for me from Mr. Thornton, who said he would let 
me know anything he might hear about these houses, and 
then we will set off. We will keep the cab ; it will be safer 
than losing ourselves, and being too late for the train this 
afternoon.” 

There were no letters awaiting him. They set out on 
their house-hunting. Thirty pounds a-year was all they 
could afford to give, but in Hampshire they could have met 
with a roomy house and pleasant garden for the money. 
Here, even the necessary accommodation of two sitting- 
rooms and four bedrooms seemed unattainable. They went 

67 


North and South 

through their list, rejecting each as they visited it. Then 
they looked at each other in dismay. 

“We must go back to the second, I think. That one — 
in Crampton, don’t they call the suburb ? There were three 
sitting-rooms ; don’t you remember how we laughed at the 
number compared with the three bedrooms ? But I have 
planned it all. The front room downstairs is to be your 
study and our dining-room (poor papa !), for you know, we 
settled mamma is to have as cheerful a sitting-room as we 
can get; and that front room upstairs, with the atrocious 
blue and pink paper and heavy cornice, had really a pretty 
view over the plain, with a great bend of river, or canal, or 
whatever it is, down below. Then I could have the little 
bedroom behind, in that projection at the head of the first 
flight of stairs over the kitchen, you know — and you and 
mamma the room behind the drawing-room, and that closet 
in the roof will make you a splendid dressing-room. n 
“ But Dixon, and the girl we are to have to help ? ” 

“ Oh, wait a minute. I am overpowered by the discovery 
of my own genius for management. Dixon is to have — let 
me see, I had it once — the back sitting-room. I think she 
will like that. She grumbles so much about the stairs at 
Heston ; and the girl is to have that sloping attic over your 
room and mamma’s. Won’t that do ? ” 

“ I daresay it will. But the papers. What taste t And the 
overloading such a house with colour and such heavy cornices!” 

“ Never mind, papa ! Surely you can charm the land- 
lord into repapering one or two of the rooms— the drawing- 
room and your bedroom — for mamma will come most in 
contact with them ; and your bookshelves will hide a great 
deal of that gaudy pattern in the dining-room.” 

“ Then you think it the best ? If so, I had better go at 
once and call on this Mr. Donkin, to whom the advertise- 
ment refers me. I will take you back to the hotel, where 
you can order lunch, and rest ; and by the time ft is ready, 
I shall be with you. I hope I shall be able to get new 
papers.” 


68 


New Scenes and Faces 

Margaret hoped so too, though she said nothing. She 
had never come fairly in contact with the taste that loves 
ornament, however bad, more than the plainness and 
simplicity which are of themselves the framework of 
elegance. 

Her father took her through the entrance of the hotel, 
and leaving her at the foot of the staircase, went to the 
address of the landlord of the house they had fixed upon. 
Just as Margaret had her hand on the door of their sitting- 
room, she was followed by a quick- stepping waiter — 

“ I beg your pardon, ma’am. The gentleman was gone 
so quickly, I had no time to tell him. Mr. Thornton called 
almost directly after you left; and, as I understood from 
what the gentleman said, you would be back in an hour, I 
told him so, and he came again about five minutes ago, and 
said he would wait for Mr. Hale. He is in your room now, 
ma’am.” 

“ Thank you. My father will return soon, and then you 
can tell him.” 

Margaret opened the door and went in with the straight, 
fearless, dignified presence habitual to her. She felt no 
awkwardness ; she had too much the habits of society for 
that. Here was a person come on business to her father ; 
and, as he was one who had shown himself obliging, she was 
disposed to treat him with a full measure of civility. Mr. 
Thornton was a good deal more surprised and discomfited 
than she. Instead of a quiet, middle-aged clergyman, a 
young lady came forward with frank dignity — a young lady 
of a different type to most of those he was in the habit of 
seeing. Her dress was very plain : a close straw bonnet of 
the best material and shape, trimmed with white ribbon ; a 
dark silk gown, without any trimming or flounce ; a large 
Indian shawl, which hung about her in long heavy folds, and 
which she wore as an empress wears her drapery. He did 
not understand who she was, as he caught the simple, 
straight, unabashed look, which showed that his being there 
was of no concern to the beautiful countenance, and called 

69 


North and South 

up no flush of surprise to the pale ivory of the complexion. 
He had heard that Mr. Hale had a daughter, but he had 
imagined that she was a little girl. 

“ Mr. Thornton, I believe ! ” said Margaret, after a half- 
instant’s pause, during which his unready words would not 
come. “ Will you sit down ? My father brought me to the 
door, not a minute ago ; but unfortunately he was not told 
that you were here, and he has gone away on some business. 
But he will come back almost directly. I am sorry you have 
had the trouble of calling twice.” 

Mr. Thornton was in habits of authority himself, but she 
seemed to assume some kind of rule over him at once. He 
had been getting impatient at the loss of his time on a 
market-day, the moment before she appeared ; yet now he 
calmly took a seat at her bidding. 

“ Do you know where it is that Mr. Hale has gone to ? 
Perhaps I might be able to find him.” 

“ He has gone to a Mr. Donkin’s in Canute Street. He 
is the landlord of the house my father wishes to take in 
Crampton.” 

Mr. Thornton knew the house. He had seen the 
advertisement, and been to look at it, in compliance with a 
request of Mr. Bell’s that he would assist Mr. Hale to the 
best of his power, and also instigated by his own interest in 
the case of a clergyman who had given up his living under 
circumstances such as those of Mr. Hale. Mr. Thornton had 
thought that the house in Crampton was really just the 
thing ; but now that he saw Margaret, with her superb ways 
of moving and looking, he began to feel ashamed of having 
imagined that it would do very well for the Hales, in spite of 
a certain vulgarity in it which had struck him at the time of 
his looking it over. 

Margaret could not help her looks ; but the short curled 
upper lip, the round, massive, upturned chin, the manner of 
carrying her head, her movements, full of a soft feminine 
defiance, always gave strangers the impression of haughti- 
ness. She was tired now, and would rather have remained 

70 


New Scenes and Faces 

silent, and taken the rest her father had planned for her ; but, 
of course, she owed it to herself to be a gentlewoman, and to 
speak courteously from time to time to this stranger ; not 
over-brushed, nor over-polished, it must be confessed, after 
his rough encounter with Milton streets and crowds. She 
wished that he would go, as he had once spoken of doing, 
instead of sitting there, answering with curt sentences all the 
remarks she made. She had taken off her shawl, and hung 
it over the back of her chair. She sat facing him and facing 
the light ; her full beauty met his eye ; her round white 
flexile throat rising out of the full, yet lithe figure ; her lips, 
moving so slightly as she spoke, not breaking the cold serene 
look of her face with any variation from the one lovely 
haughty curve ; her eyes, with their soft gloom, meeting his 
with quiet maiden freedom. He almost said to himself that 
he did not like her, before their conversation ended ; he tried 
so to compensate himself for the mortified feeling, that while 
he looked upon her with an admiration he could not repress, 
she looked at him with proud indifference, taking him, he 
thought, for what, in his irritation, he told himself he was — a 
great rough fellow, with not a grace or a refinement about 
him. Her quiet coldness of demeanour he interpreted into 
contemptuousness, and resented it in his heart to the pitch 
of almost inclining him to get up and go away, and have 
nothing more to do with these Hales and their super- 
ciliousness. 

Just as Margaret had exhausted her last subject of con- 
versation — and yet conversation that could hardly be called 
which consisted of so few and such short speeches — her 
father came in, and, with his pleasant gentlemanly courteous- 
ness of apology, reinstated his name and family in Mr. 
Thornton’s good opinion. 

Mr. Hale and his visitor had a good deal to say respecting 
their mutual friend, Mr. Bell ; and Margaret, glad that her 
part of entertaining the visitor was over, went to the window 
to try and make herself more familiar with the strange aspect 
of the street. She got so much absorbed in watching what 

7i 


North and South 

was going on outside that she hardly heard her father when 
he spoke to her, and^he had to repeat what he said — 

“ Margaret! the landlord will persist in admiring that 
hideous paper, and I am afraid we must let it remain.” 

“ Oh dear ! I am sorry ! ” she replied, and began to turn 
over in her mind the possibility of hiding part of it,, at least, 
by some of her sketches, but gave up the idea at last, as 
likely only to make bad worse. Her father, meanwhile, with 
his kindly country hospitality, was pressing Mr. Thornton to 
stay to luncheon with them. It would have been very in- 
convenient to him to do so, yet he felt that he should have 
yielded, if Margaret by word or look had seconded her 
father’s invitation ; he was glad she did not, and yet he was 
irritated at her for not doing it. She gave him a low, grave 
bow when he left, and he felt more awkward and self- 
conscious in every limb than he had ever done in all his life 
before. 

“ Well, Margaret, now to luncheon, as fast as we can. 
Have you ordered it ? ” 

“ No, papa ; that man was here when I came home, and 
I have never had an opportunity.” 

“ Then we must take anything we can get. He must 
have been waiting a long time, I’m afraid.” 

“ It seemed exceedingly long to me. I was just at the 
last gasp when you came in. He never went on with any 
subject, but gave little, short, abrupt answers.” 

“ Very much to the point though, I should think. He is 
a clear-headed fellow. He said (did you hear?) that 
Crampton is on gravelly soil, and by far the most healthy 
suburb in the neighbourhood of Milton.” 

When they returned to Heston, there was the day’s 
account to be given to Mrs. Hale, who was full of questions 
which they answered in the intervals of tea-drinking. 

“ And what is your correspondent, Mr. Thornton, like ? ” 

“ Ask Margaret,” said her husband. “ She and he had a 
long attempt at conversation, while I was away speaking to 
the landlord.” 


72 


New Scenes and Faces 

“ Oh ! I hardly know what he is like,” said Margaret 
lazily ; too tired to tax her powers of description much. And 
then rousing herself, she said, “ He is a tall, broad-shouldered 
man, about — how old, papa ? ” 

“ I should guess about thirty.” 

“ About thirty — with a face that is neither exactly plain, 
nor yet handsome, nothing remarkable — not quite a gentle- 
man ; but that was hardly to be expected.” 

“Not vulgar, or common though,” put in her father, 
rather jealous of any disparagement of the sole friend he 
had in Milton. 

“ Oh no ! ” said Margaret. “With such an expression 
of resolution and power, no face, however plain in feature, 
could be either vulgar or common. I should not like to 
have to bargain with him; he looks very inflexible. Alto- 
gether a man who seems made for his niche, mamma ; 
sagacious, and strong, as becomes a great tradesman. ” 

“ Don’t call the Milton manufacturers tradesmen, Mar- 
garet,” said her father. “ They are very different.” 

“ Are they ? I apply the word to all who have some- 
thing tangible to sell ; but, if you think the term is not 
correct, papa, I won’t use it. But, oh mamma ! speaking 
of vulgarity and commonness, you must prepare yourself for 
our drawing-room paper. Pink and blue roses, with yellow 
leaves ! And such a heavy cornice round the room ! ” 

But when they removed to their new house in Milton, 
the obnoxious papers were gone. The landlord received 
their thanks very composedly ; and let them think, if they 
liked, that he had relented from his expressed determination 
not to repaper. There was no particular need to tell them, 
that what he did not care to do for a Reverend Mr. Hale, 
unknown in Milton, he was only too glad to do at the one 
short, sharp remonstrance of Mr. Thornton, the wealthy 
manufacturer. 


73 


North and South 


CHAPTER VIII 

HOME-SICKNESS 

“ And it’s hame, hame, hame, 

Hame fain wad I be.” 

It needed the pretty light papering of the rooms to reconcile 
them to Milton. It needed more — more that could not be 
had. The thick yellow November fogs had come on ; and 
the view of the plain in the valley, made by the sweeping 
bend of the river, was all shut out when Mrs. Hale arrived 
at her new home. 

Margaret and Dixon had been at work for two days, 
unpacking and arranging, but everything inside the house 
still looked in disorder ; and, outside, a thick fog crept up to 
the very windows, and was driven in to every open door in 
choking white wreaths of unwholesome mist. 

“ Oh, Margaret ! are we to live here ? ” asked Mrs. Hale, 
in blank dismay. 

Margaret’s heart echoed the dreariness of the tone in 
which this question was put. She could scarcely command 
herself enough to say, “ Oh, the fogs in London are sometimes 
far worse ! ” 

“ But then you know that London itself, and friends, lie 
behind it. Here — well ! we are desolate. Oh, Dixon, what a 
place this is ! ” 

“ Indeed, ma’am, I’m sure it will be your death before 
long, and then I know who’ll — stay ! Miss Hale, that’s far 
too heavy for you to lift.” 

“ Not at all, thank you, Dixon,” replied Margaret coldly. 
“ The best thing we can do for mamma is to get her room 
quite ready for her to go to bed, while I go and bring her a 
cup of coffee.” 

Mr. Hale was equally out of spirits, and equally came 
upon Margaret for sympathy. 

74 


Home-sickness 

“ Margaret, I do believe this is an unhealthy place. 
Only suppose that your mother’s health or yours should 
suffer. I wish I had gone into some country place in Wales ; 
this is really terrible,” said he, going up to the window. 

There was no comfort to be given. They were settled in 
Milton, and must endure smoke and fogs for a season ; indeed, 
all other life seemed shut out from them by as thick a fog of 
circumstance. Only the day before, Mr. Hale had been 
reckoning up with dismay how much them removal and 
fortnight at Heston had cost, and he found it had absorbed 
nearly all his little stock of ready money. No ! here they 
were, and here they must remain. 

At night when Margaret realised this, she felt inclined to 
sit down in a stupor of despair. The heavy smoky air hung 
about her bedroom, which occupied the long narrow pro- 
jection at the back of the house. The window, placed at the 
side of the oblong, looked to the blank wall of a similar pro- 
jection, not above ten feet distant. It loomed through the 
fog like a great barrier to hope. Inside the room everything 
was in confusion. All their efforts had been directed to 
make her mother’s room comfortable. Margaret sat down 
on a box, the direction card upon which struck her as having 
been written at Helstone — beautiful, beloved Helstone ! She 
lost herself in dismal thought : but at last she determined to 
take her mind away from the present ; and suddenly remem- 
bered that she had a letter from Edith which she had only 
half read in the bustle of the morning. It was to tell of 
their arrival at Corfu ; their voyage along the Mediterranean 
— their music, and dancing on board ship ; the gay new life 
opening upon her ; her house with its trellised balcony, and 
its views over white cliffs and deep blue sea. 

Edith wrote fluently and well, if not graphically. She 
could not only seize the salient and characteristic points of a 
scene, but she could enumerate enough of indiscriminate 
particulars for Margaret to make it out for herself. Captain 
Lennox and another lately married officer shared a villa, 
high up on the beautiful precipitous rocks overhanging the 

75 


North and South 

sea. Their days, late as it was in the year, seemed spent 
in boating or land picnics ; all out-of-doors, pleasure- seeking 
and glad, Edith’s life seemed like the deep vault of blue sky 
above her, free — utterly free from fleck or cloud.. Her 
husband had to attend drill, and she, the most musical 
officer’s wife there, had to copy the new and popular tunes 
out of the most recent English music, for the benefit of the 
bandmaster ; those seemed their most severe and arduous 
duties. She expressed an affectionate hope that, if the 
regiment stopped another year at Corfu, Margaret might 
come out and pay her a long visit. She asked Margaret if 
she remembered the day twelvemonth on which she, Edith, 
wrote — how it rained all day long in Harley Street; and 
how she would not put on her new gown to go to a stupid 
dinner, and get it all wet and splashed in going to the carriage ; 
and how at that very dinner they had first met Captain 
Lennox. 

Yes ! Margaret remembered it well. Edith and Mrs. 
Shaw had gone to dinner. Margaret had joined the party 
in the evening. The recollection of the plentiful luxury of 
all the arrangements, the stately handsomeness of the furni- 
ture, the size of the house, the peaceful, untroubled ease of 
the visitors — all came vividly before her, in strange contrast 
to the present time. The smooth sea of that old life closed 
up, without a mark left to tell where they had all been. The 
habitual dinners, the calls, the shopping, the dancing even- 
ings, were all going on, going on for ever, though her Aunt 
Shaw and Edith were no longer there ; and she, of course, 
was even less missed. She doubted if any one of that old 
set ever thought of her, except Henry Lennox. He too, she 
knew, would strive to forget her, because of the pain she had 
caused him. She had heard him often boast of his power 
of putting any disagreeable thought far away from him. 
Then she penetrated farther into what might have been. If 
she had cared for him as a lover, and had accepted him, and 
this change in her father’s opinions and consequent station 
had taken place, she could not doubt but that it would have 

76 


Home-sickness 

been impatiently received by Mr. Lennox. It was a bitter 
mortification to her in one sense; but she could bear it 
patiently, because she knew her father’s purity of purpose, 
and that strengthened her to endure his errors, grave and 
serious though in her estimation they were. But the fact 
of the world esteeming her father degraded, in its rough 
wholesale judgment, would have oppressed and irritated Mr. 
Lennox. As she realised what might have been, she grew 
to be thankful for what was. They were at the lowest now ; 
they could not be worse. Edith’s astonishment and her 
Aunt Shaw’s dismay would have to be met bravely, when 
their letters came. So Margaret rose up and began slowly 
to undress herself, feeling the full luxury of acting leisurely, 
late as it was, after all the past hurry of the day. She fell 
asleep, hoping for some brightness, either internal or external. 
But if she had known how long it would be before the bright- 
ness came, her heart would have sunk low down. The time 
of the year was most unpropitious to health as well as to 
spirits. Her mother caught a severe cold, and Dixon her- 
self was evidently not well, although Margaret could not 
insult her more than by trying to save her, or by taking any 
care of her. They could hear of no girl to assist her; all 
were at work in the factories ; at least, those who applied 
were well scolded by Dixon, for thinking that such as they 
could ever be trusted to work in a gentleman’s house. So 
they had to keep a charwoman in almost constant employ. 
Margaret longed to send for Charlotte ; but, besides the 
objection of her being a better servant than they could now 
afford to keep, the distance was too great. 

Mr. Hale met with several pupils, recommended to him 
by Mr. Bell, or by the more immediate influence of Mr. 
Thornton. They were mostly of the age when many boys 
would be still at school ; but, according to the prevalent, and 
apparently well-founded notions of Milton, to make a lad 
into a good tradesman he must be caught young, and accli- 
matised to the life of the mill, or office, or warehouse. If he 
were sent to even the Scotch Universities, he came back 

77 


North and South 

unsettled for commercial pursuits : how much more so if he 
went to Oxford or Cambridge, where he could not be entered 
till he was eighteen ? So most of the manufacturers placed 
their sons in sucking situations at fourteen or fifteen years 
of age, unsparingly cutting away all off-shoot's in the direc- 
tion of literature or high mental cultivation, in hopes of 
throwing the whole strength and vigour of the plant into 
commerce. Still there were some wiser parents ; and some 
young men, who had sense enough to perceive their own 
deficiencies, and strive to remedy them. Nay, there were a 
few no longer youths, but men in the prime of life, who 
had the stern wisdom to acknowledge their own ignorance, 
and to learn late what they should have learnt early. Mr. 
Thornton was perhaps the oldest of Mr. Hale’s pupils. He 
was certainly the favourite. Mr. Hale got into the habit of 
quoting' his opinions so frequently, and with such regard, 
that it became a little domestic joke to wonder what time, 
during the hour appointed for instruction, could be given to 
absolute learning, so much of it appeared to have been spent 
in conversation. 

Margaret rather encouraged this light, merry way of 
viewing her father’s acquaintance with Mr. Thornton, because 
she felt that her mother was inclined to look upon this new 
friendship of her husband’s with jealous eyes. As long as 
his time had been solely occupied with his books and his 
parishioners, as at Helstone, she had appeared to care little 
whether she saw much of him or not ; but, now that he 
looked eagerly forward to each renewal of his intercourse 
with Mr. Thornton, she seemed hurt and annoyed, as if he 
were slighting her companionship for the first time. Mr. 
Hale’s over-praise had the usual effect of over-praise upon 
his auditors : they were a little inclined to rebel against 
Aristides being always called the Just. 

After a quiet life in a country parsonage for more than 
twenty years, there was something dazzling to Mr. Hale in 
the energy which conquered immense difficulties with ease ; 
the power of the machinery of Milton, the power of the men 

73 


Home-sickness 

of Milton, impressed him with a sense of grandeur, which 
he yielded to without caring to inquire into the details of its 
exercise. But Margaret went less abroad, among machinery 
and men ; saw less of power in its public effect, and, as it 
happened, she was thrown with one or two of those who, 
in all measures affecting masses of people, must be acute 
sufferers for the good of many. The question always is, has 
everything been done to make the sufferings of these excep- 
tions as small as possible ? Or, in the triumph of the 
crowded procession, have the helpless been trampled on, 
instead of being gently lifted aside out of the roadway of the 
conqueror, whom they had no power to accompany on his 
march ? 

It fell to Margaret’s share to have to look out for a ser- 
vant to assist Dixon, who had at first undertaken to find 
just the person she wanted to do all the rough work of the 
house. But Dixon’s ideas of helpful girls were founded on 
the recollection of tidy elder scholars at Helstone school, 
who were only too proud to be allowed to come to the 
parsonage on a busy day, and treated Mrs. Dixon with all 
the respect which they paid to Mr. and Mrs. Hale, and a good 
deal more of fright. Dixon was not unconscious of this 
awed reverence which was given to her ; nor did she dislike 
it ; it flattered her much as Louis the Fourteenth was 
flattered by his courtiers shading their eyes from the dazzling 
light of his presence. But nothing short of her faithful love 
for Mrs. Hale could have made her endure the rough inde- 
pendent way in which all the Milton girls, who made 
application for the servant’s place, replied to her inquiries 
respecting their qualifications. They even went the length 
of questioning her back again ; having doubts and fears of 
their own, as to the solvency of a family who lived in a 
house of thirty pounds a year, and yet gave themselves airs, 
and kept two servants, one of them so very high and mighty. 
Mr. Hale was no longer looked upon as Yicar of Helstone, 
but as a man who only spent at a certain rate. Margaret 
was weary and impatient of the accounts which Dixon 

79 


North and South 

perpetually brought to Mrs. Hale of the behaviour of these 
would-be servants. Not but what Margaret was repelled by 
the rough uncourteous manners of these people; not but 
what she shrunk with fastidious pride from their hail-fellow 
accost, and severely resented their unconcealed curiosity as 
to the means and position of any family who lived in Milton, 
and yet were not engaged in trade of some kind. But the 
more Margaret felt impertinence, the more likely she was to 
be silent on the subject ; and, at any rate, if she took upon her- 
self to make inquiry for a servant, she could spare her mother 
the recital of all her disappointments and fancied or real insults. 

Margaret accordingly went up and down to butchers and 
grocers, seeking for a nonpareil of a girl; and lowering 
her hopes and expectations every week, as she found the 
difficulty of meeting with any one. in a manufacturing town 
who did not prefer the better wages and greater independ- 
ence of working in a mill. It was something of a trial to 
Margaret to go out by herself in this busy bustling place. 
Mrs. Shaw’s ideas of propriety and her own helpless depend- 
ence on others, had always made her insist that a footman 
should accompany Edith and Margaret, if they went beyond 
Harley Street, or the immediate neighbourhood. The limits 
by which this rule of her aunt’s had circumscribed Margaret’s 
independence had been silently rebelled against at the time : 
and she had doubly enjoyed the free walks and rambles of 
her forest life from the contrast which they presented. She 
went along there with a boundless fearless step, that occa- 
sionally broke out into a run, if she were in a hurry, and 
occasionally was stilled into perfect repose, as she stood 
listening to or watching any of the wild creatures who sang 
in the leafy courts, or glanced out with their keen bright eyes 
from the low brushwood or tangled furze. It was a trial to 
come down from such motion or such stillness, only guided 
by her own sweet will, to the even and decorous pace 
necessary in streets. But she could have laughed at herself 
for minding this change, if it had not been accompanied by 
what was a more serious annoyance. 

80 


Home-sickness 

The side of the town on which Crampton lay was 
especially a thoroughfare for the factory people. In the 
back streets around them there were many mills, out of 
which poured streams of men and women two or three times 
a day. Until Margaret had learnt the times of their ingress 
and egress, she was very unfortunate in constantly falling in 
with them. They came rushing along, with bold, fearless 
faces, and loud laughs and jests, particularly aimed at all 
those who appeared to be above them in rank or station. 
The tones of their unrestrained voices, and their carelessness 
of all common rules of street politeness, frightened Margaret 
a little at first. The girls, with their rough, but not un- 
friendly freedom, would comment on her dress, even touch 
her shawl or gown to ascertain the exact material ; nay, once 
or twice she was asked questions relative to some article 
which they particularly admired. There was such a simple 
reliance on her womanly sympathy with their love of dress, 
and on her kindliness,' that she gladly replied to these 
inquiries, as soon as she understood them ; and half smiled 
back at their remarks. She did not mind meeting any num- 
ber of girls, loud spoken and boisterous though they might 
be. But she alternately dreaded and fired up against the 
workmen, who commented not on her dress, but on her 
looks, in the same open, fearless manner. She, who had 
hitherto felt that even the most refined remark on her 
personal appearance was an impertinence, had to endure 
undisguised admiration from these outspoken men. But the 
very outspokenness marked their innocence of any intention 
to hurt her delicacy, as she would have perceived if she had 
been less frightened by the disorderly tumult. Out of her 
fright came a flash of indignation which made her face 
scarlet, and her dark eyes gather flame, as she heard some 
of their speeches. Yet there were other sayings of theirs, 
which, when she reached the quiet safety of home, amused 
her even while they irritated her. 

For instance, one day, after she had passed a number of 
men, several of whom had paid her the not unusual 

8r G 


North and South 

I 

compliment of wishing she was their sweetheart, one of the 
lingerers added, “ Your bonny face, my lass, makes the day 
look brighter.” And another day, as she was unconsciously 
smiling at some passing thought, she was addressed by a 
poorly-dressed, middle-aged, workman, with “ You may well 
smile, my lass ; many a one would smile to have such a 
bonny face.” This man looked so careworn that Margaret 
could not help giving him an answering smile, glad to think 
that her looks, such as they were, should have had the power 
to call up a pleasant thought. He seemed to understand 
her acknowledging glance, and a silent recognition was estab- 
lished between them whenever the chances of the day 
brought them across each other’s paths. They had never 
exchanged a word ; nothing had been said but that first 
compliment ; yet somehow Margaret looked upon this man 
with more interest than upon any one else in Milton. Once 
or twice, on Sundays, she saw him walking with a girl, 
evidently his daughter, and, if possible, still more unhealthy 
than he was himself. 

One day Margaret and her father had been as far as the 
fields that lay around the town ; it was early spring, and she 
had gathered some of the hedge and ditch flowers, dog- 
violets, lesser celandines, and the like, with an unspoken 
lament in her heart for the sweet profusion of the South. 
Her father had left her to go into Milton upon some busi- 
ness ; and on the road home she met her humble friends. 
The girl looked wistfully at the flowers, and, acting on a 
sudden impulse, Margaret offered them to her. Her pale 
blue eyes lightened up as she took them, and her father 
spoke for her. 

“ Thank yo, miss. Bessy’ll think a deal o’ them flowers ; 
that hoo will ; and I shall think a deal o’ yor kindness. 
Yo’re not of this country, I reckon ? ” 

“ No ! ” said Margaret, half sighing. “ I come from the 
South — from Hampshire,” she continued, a little afraid of 
wounding his consciousness of ignorance, if she used a name 
which he did not understand. 

82 


Home-sickness 

“ That’s beyond London, I reckon ? And I come fro’ 
Burnley-ways, and forty miles to th’ North. And yet, yo 
see, North and South has both met and made kind o’ friends 
in this big smoky place.” 

Margaret had slackened her pace to walk alongside of the 
man and his daughter, whose steps were regulated by the 
feebleness of the latter. She now spoke to the girl, and 
there was a sound of tender pity in the tone of her voice as 
she did so that went right to the heart of the father. 

“ I’m afraid you are not very strong.” 

“No,” said the girl, “ nor never will be.” 

“ Spring is coming,” said Margaret, as if to suggest 
pleasant, hopeful thoughts. 

“ Spring nor summer will do me no good,” said the girl 
quietly. 

Margaret looked up at the man, almost expecting some 
contradiction from him, or at least some remark that would 
modify his daughter’s utter hopelessness. But, instead, he 
added — 

“ I’m afraid hoo speaks truth. I’m afraid hoo’s too far 
gone in a waste.” 

“ I shall have a spring where I’m boun to, and flowers, 
and amaranths, and shining robes besides.” 

“ Poor lass, poor lass ! ” said her father in a low tone. 
“Im none so sure o’ that ; but it's a comfort to thee, poor 
lass, poor lass. Poor father it’ll be soon ! ” 

Margaret was shocked by his words — shocked, but not 
repelled ; rather, attracted and interested. 

“ Where do you live ? I think we must be neighbours, 
we meet so often on this road, 

“ We put up at 9 Frances Street, second turn to th’ left at 
after yo’ve past th’ Goulden Dragon.” 

“ And your name ? I must not forget that.” 

“ I’m none ashamed o’ my name. It’s Nicholas Higgins. 
Hoo’s called Bessy Higgins. Whatten yo’ asking for ? ” 

Margaret was surprised at this last question, for at 
Helstone it would have been an understood thing, after the 

83 


North and South 

inquiries she had made, that she intended to come and call 
upon any poor neighbour whose name and habitation she 
had asked for. 

“I thought — I meant to come and see you.” She sud- 
denly felt rather shy of offering the visit, without having any 
reason to give for her wish to make it, beyond a kindly in- 
terest in a stranger. It seemed all at once to take the shape 
of an impertinence on her part ; she read this meaning too 
in the man’s eyes. 

“ I’m none so fond of having strange folk in my house.” 
But then relenting, as he saw her heightened colour, he 
added, “ Yo’re a foreigner, as one may say, and maybe don’t 
know many folk here, and yo’ve given my wench here 
flowers out of yo’r own hand ; — yo may come if yo like.” 

Margaret was half amused, half nettled at this answer. 
She was not sure if she would go where permission was 
given so like a favour conferred. But when they came to 
the turn into Frances Street, the girl stopped a minute, and 
said — 

“ Yo’ll not forget yo’re to come and see us.” 

“ Aye, aye,” said the father impatiently, “ hoo’ll come. 
Hoo’s a bit set up now, because hoo thinks I might ha’ 
spoken more civilly ; but hoo’ll think better on it, and come. 
I can read her proud bonny face like a book. Come along, 
Bess ; there’s the mill bell ringing.” 

Margaret went home, wondering at her new friends, and 
smiling at the man’s insight into what had been passing in 
her mind. From that day Milton became a brighter place to 
her. It was not the long, bleak sunny days of spring, nor 
yet was it that time was reconciling her to the town of her 
habitation. It was that in it she had found a human 
interest. 


84 


Dressing for Tea 


CHAPTER IX 

DRESSING FOR TEA 

“ Let China’s earth, enrich’d with coloured stains, 

Pencill’d with gold, and streaked with azure veins, 

The grateful flavour of the Indian leaf, 

Or Mocha’s sunburnt berry glad receive.” 

Mrs. Barbauld. 

The day after this meeting with Higgins and his daughter 
Mr. Hale came upstairs into the little drawing-room at an 
unusual hour. He went up to different objects in the room, 
as if examining them, but Margaret saw that it was merely a 
nervous trick — a way of putting off something he wished, yet 
feared to say. Out it came at last — 

“ My dear ! I’ve asked Mr. Thornton to come to tea 
to-night.” 

Mrs. Hale was leaning back in her easy-chair, with her 
eyes shut, and an expression of pain on her face which had 
become habitual to her of late. But she roused up into 
querulousness at this speech of her husband’s. 

“ Mr. Thornton ! — and to-night ! What in the world 
does the man want to come here for ? And Dixon is wash- 
ing my muslins and laces, and there is no soft water with 
these horrid east winds, which I suppose we shall have all 
the year round in Milton.” 

“ The wind is veering round, my dear,” said Mr. Hale, 
looking out at the smoke, which drifted right from' the east, 
only he did not yet understand the points of the compass, 
and rather arranged them ad libitum according to circum- 
stances. 

“ Don’t tell me ! ” said Mrs. Hale, shuddering up, and 
wrapping her shawl about her still more closely. “ But, east 
or west wind, I suppose this man comes.” 

“ Oh mamma that shows you never saw Mr. Thornton. 

85 


North and South 

He looks like a person who would enjoy battling with every 
adverse thing he could meet with — enemies, winds, or cir- 
cumstances. The more it rains and blows, the more certain 
we are to have him. But I’ll go and help Dixon. I’m 
getting to be a famous clear- starcher. And he won’t want 
any amusement beyond talking to papa. Papa, I am really 
longing to see the Pythias to your Damon. You know I 
never saw him but once, and then we were so puzzled to 
know what to say to each other that we did not get on par- 
ticularly well.” 

“ I don’t know that you would ever like him, or think 
him agreeable, Margaret. He is not a lady’s man.” 

Margaret wreathed her throat in a scornful curve. 

“ I don’t particularly admire ladies’ men, papa. But Mr. 
Thornton comes here as your friend — as one who has appre- 
ciated you ” 

“ The only person in Milton,” said Mrs. Hale. 

“So we will give him a welcome, and some cocoa-nut 
cakes. Dixon will be flattered if we ask her to make some ; 
and I will undertake to iron your caps, mamma.” 

Many a time that morning did Margaret wish Mr. Thorn- 
ton far enough away. She had planned other employments 
for herself ; a letter to Edith, a good piece of Dante, a visit 
to the Higginses. But, instead, she ironed away, listening 
to Dixon’s complaints, and only hoping that by an excess of 
sympathy she might prevent her from carrying the recital of 
her sorrows to Mrs. Hale. Every now and then, Margaret 
had to remind herself of her father’s regard for Mr. Thornton, 
to subdue the irritation of weariness that was stealing over 
her, and bringing on one of the bad headaches to which she 
had lately become liable. She could hardly speak when she 
sat down at last, and told her mother that she was no longer 
Peggy the laundry-maid, but Margaret Hale the lady. She 
meant this speech for a little joke, and was vexed enough with 
her busy tongue when she found her mother taking it seriously. 

“ Yes ! if any one had told me, when I was Miss Beres- 
ford, and one of the belles of the county, that a child of 

86 


Dressing for Tea 

mine would have to stand half a day, in a. little poky kitchen, 
working away like any servant, that we might prepare pro- 
perly for the reception of a tradesman, and that this trades- 
man should be the only ” 

“ Oh, mamma ! ” said Margaret, lifting herself up, “ don’t 
punish me so for a careless speech. I don’t mind ironing, or 
any kind of work, for you and papa. I am myself a born 
and bred lady through it all, even though it comes to scour- 
ing a floor, or washing dishes. I am tired now, just for a 
little while ; but in half-an-hour I shall be ready to do the 
same over again. And as to Mr. Thornton’s being in trade, 
why he can’t help that now, poor fellow. I don’t suppose 
his education would fit him for much else.” Margaret lifted 
herself slowly up, and went to her own room ; for just now 
she could not bear much more. 

In Mr. Thornton’s house, at this very same time, a 
similar, yet different, scene was going on. A large-boned 
lady, long past middle age, sat at work in a grim handsomely- 
furnished dining-room. Her features, like her frame, were 
strong and massive, rather than heavy. Her face moved 
slowly from one decided expression to another equally 
decided. There was no great variety in her countenance ; 
but those who looked at it once, generally looked at it again ; 
even the passers-by in the street, half-turned their heads to 
gaze an instant longer at the firm, severe, dignified woman, 
who never gave way in street-courtesy, or paused in her 
straight-onward course to the clearly defined end which she 
proposed to herself. 

She was handsomely dressed in stout black silk, of which 
not a thread was worn or discoloured. She was mending a 
large, long table-cloth of the finest texture, holding it up 
against the light occasionally to discover thin places, which 
required her delicate care. There was not a book about 
in the room, with the exception of Matthew Henry’s Bible 
Commentaries, six volumes of which lay in the centre of the 
massive sideboard, flanked by a tea-urn on one side, and a 
lamp on the other. In some remote apartment, there was 

87 


North and South 

exercise upon the piano going on. Some one was practising 
up a morceau de salon, playing it very rapidly, every third 
note, on an average, being either indistinct, or wholly missed 
out, and the loud chords at the end being half of them false, 
but not the less satisfactory to the performer. Mrs. Thorn- 
ton heard a step, like her own in its decisive character, pass 
the dining-room door. 

“ John ! Is that you ? ” 

Her son opened the door, and showed himself. 

“ What has brought you home so early ? I thought you 
were going to tea with that friend of Mr. Bell’s ; that Mr. 
Hale?” 

“ So I am, mother. I am come home to dress ! ” 

“ Dress ! humph ! When I was a girl, young men were 
satisfied with dressing once in a day. Why should you 
dress to go and take a cup of tea with an old parson ? * 

“ Mr. Hale is a gentleman, and his wife and daughter are 
ladies.” 

“Wife and daughter ! Do they teach too ? What do 
they do ? You have never mentioned them.” 

“No! mother, because I have never seen Mrs. Hale; I 
have only seen Miss Hale for half-an-hour.” 

“ Take care you don’t get caught by a penniless girl, 
John.” 

“ I am not easily caught, mother, as I think you know. 
But I must not have Miss Hale spoken of in that way, 
which, you know, is offensive to me. I never was aware of 
any young lady trying to catch me yet, nor do I believe 
that any one has ever given themselves that useless 
trouble.” 

Mrs. Thornton did not choose to yield the point to her 
son ; or else she had, in general, pride enough for her sex. 

“ Well ! I only say, take care. Perhaps our Milton 
girls have too much spirit and good feeling to go angling 
after husbands ; but this Miss Hale comes out of the aristo- 
cratic counties, where, if all tales be true, rich husbands are 
reckoned prizes.” 


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Wrought Iron and Gold 

Mr. Thornton’s brow contracted, and he came a step 
forward into the room. 

“ Mother ** (with a short scornful laugh), “ you will make 
me confess. The only time I saw Miss Hale, she treated 
me with a haughty civility which had a strong flavour of 
contempt in it. She held herself aloof from me as if she had 
been a queen, and I her humble, unwashed vassal. Be easy, 
mother.” 

“ No ! I am not easy nor content either. What busi- 
ness had she, a renegade clergyman’s daughter, to turn up 
her nose at you ! I would dress for none of them — a saucy 
set ! if I were you.” As he was leaving the room he said — 

“ Mr. Hale is good, and gentle, and learned. He is not 
saucy. As for Mrs. Hale, I will tell you what she is like to- 
night, if you care to hear.” He shut the door, and was 
gone. 

“ Despise my son ! treat him as her vassal, indeed ! 
Humph ! I should like to know where she could find such 
another ! Boy and man, he’s the noblest, stoutest heart I 
ever knew. I don’t care if I am his mother ; I can see 
what’s what, and not be blind. I know what Fanny is ; and 
I know what John is. Despise him ! I hate her ! ” 


CHAPTER X 

WROUGHT IRON AND GOLD 

“We are the trees whom shaking fastens more.” 

George Herbert. 

Mr. Thornton left the house without coming into the 
dining-room again. He was rather late, and walked rapidly 
out to Crampton. He was anxious not to slight his new 
friend by any disrespectful unpunctuality. The church- 
clock struck half-past seven as he stood at the door awaiting 

89 


North and South 

Dixon’s slow movements ; always doubly tardy when she 
had to degrade herself by answering the door-bell. He was 
ushered into the little drawing-room, and kindly greeted by 
Mr. Hale, who led him up to his wife, whose pale face, and 
shawl-draped figure, made a silent excuse for the cold lan- 
guor of her greeting. Margaret was lighting the lamp when 
he entered, for the darkness was coming on. The lamp 
threw a pretty light into the centre of the dusky room, from 
which, with country habits, they did not exclude the night- 
skies, and the outer darkness of air. Somehow, that room 
contrasted itself with the one he had lately left ; handsome, 
ponderous, with no sign of feminine habitation, except in the 
one spot where his mother sate, and no convenience for any 
other employment than eating and drinking. To be sure, it 
was a dining-room ; his mother preferred to sit in it ; and 
her will was a household law. But the drawing-room was 
not like this. It was twice — twenty times as fine ; not one 
quarter as comfortable. Here were no mirrors, not even a 
scrap of glass to reflect the light, and answer the same pur- 
pose as water in a landscape ; no gilding ; a warm, sober, 
breadth of colouring, well relieved by the dear old Helstone 
chintz-curtains and chair covers. An open davenport stood 
in the window opposite the door ; in the other there was a 
stand, with a tall white china vase, from which drooped 
wreaths of English ivy, pale green birch, and copper-coloured 
beech-leaves. Pretty baskets of work stood about in various 
places : and books, not cared for on account of their binding 
solely, lay on one table, as if recently put down. Behind 
the door was another table decked out for tea, with a white 
table-cloth, on which flourished the cocoa-nut cakes, and a 
basket piled with oranges and ruddy American apples, 
heaped on leaves. 

It appeared to Mr. Thornton that all these graceful cares 
were habitual to the family ; and especially of a piece with 
Margaret. She stood by the tea-table in a light-coloured 
muslin gown, which had a good deal of pink about it. She 
looked as if she was not attending to the conversation, but 

90 


Wrought Iron and Gold 

solely busy with the tea-cups, among which her round 
ivory hands moved with pretty, noiseless daintiness. She 
had a bracelet on one taper arm, which would fall down 
over her round wrist. Mr. Thornton watched the replacing 
of this troublesome ornament with far more attention than 
he gave to her father. It seemed as if it fascinated him 
to see her push it up impatiently until it tightened her soft 
flesh ; and then to mark the loosening — the fall. He could 
almost have exclaimed — “ There it goes again ! ” There was 
so little left to be done after he arrived at the preparation 
for the tea, that he was almost sorry the obligation of eating 
and drinking came so soon to prevent his watching Mar- 
garet. She handed him his cup of tea with the proud air of 
an unwilling slave ; but her eye caught the moment when he 
was ready for another cup ; and he almost longed to ask her 
to do for him what he saw her compelled to do for her 
father, who took her little finger and thumb in his masculine 
hand, and made them serve as sugar-tongs. Mr. Thornton 
saw her beautiful eyes lifted to her father, full of light, half- 
laughter, and half -love, as this bit of pantomime went on 
between the two, unobserved, as they fancied, by any. 
Margaret’s head still ached, as the paleness of her com- 
plexion, and her silence might have testified ; but she was 
resolved to throw herself into the breach, if there was any 
long untoward pause, rather than that her father’s friend, 
pupil, and guest should have cause to think himself in any 
way neglected. But the conversation went on ; and Mar- 
garet drew into a corner, near her mother, with her work, 
after the tea-things were taken away; and felt that she 
might let her thoughts roam, without fear of being suddenly 
wanted to fill up a gap. 

Mr. Thornton and Mr. Hale were both absorbed in the 
continuation of some subject which had been started at their 
last meeting. Margaret was recalled to a sense of the 
present by some trivial, low-spoken remark of her mother’s ; 
and on suddenly looking up from her work, her eye was 
caught by the difference of outward appearance between her 

9i 


North and South 

father and Mr. Thornton, as betokening such distinctly 
opposite natures. Her father was of slight figure, which 
made him appear taller than he really was, when not con- 
trasted, as at this time, with the tall, massive frame of 
another. The lines in her father’s fa,ce were soft and wav- 
ing, with a frequent undulating kind of trembling movement 
passing over them, showing every fluctuating emotion ; the 
eyelids were large and arched, giving to the eyes a peculiar 
languid beauty which was almost feminine. The brows were 
finely arched, but were, by the very size of the dreamy lids, 
raised to a considerable distance from the eyes. Now, in 
Mr. Thornton’s face the straight brows fell over the clear, 
deep-set earnest eyes, which, without being unpleasantly 
sharp, seemed intent enough to penetrate into the very heart 
and core of what he was looking at. The lines in the face 
were few but firm, as if they were carved in marble, and lay 
principally about the lips, which were slightly compressed 
over a set of teeth so faultless and beautiful as to give the 
effect of sudden sunlight when the rare bright smile, coming 
in an instant and shining out of the eyes, changed the whole 
look from the severe and resolved expression of a man ready 
to do and dare everything, to the keen honest enjoyment of 
the moment, which is seldom shown so fearlessly and in- 
stantaneously except by children. Margaret liked this smile ; 
it was the first thing she had admired in this new friend of 
her father’s ; and the opposition of character, shown in all 
these details of appearance she had just been noticing, 
seemed to explain the attraction they evidently felt towards 
each other. 

She rearranged her mother’s worsted- work, and fell back 
into her own thoughts — as completely forgotten by Mr. 
Thornton as if she had not been in the room, so thoroughly 
was he occupied in explaining to Mr. Hale the magnificent 
power, yet delicate adjustment of the might of the steam- 
hammer, which was recalling to Mr. Hale some of the 
wonderful stories of subservient genii in the Arabian Nights 
— one moment stretching from earth to sky and filling all 

92 


Wrought Iron and Gold 

the width of the horizon, at the next obediently compressed 
into a vase small enough to be borne in the hand of a 
child. 

“ And this imagination of power, this practical realisation 
of a gigantic thought, came out of one man’s brain in our 
good town. That very man has it within him to mount, 
step by step, on each wonder he achieves to higher marvels 
still. And I’ll be bound to say, we have many among us 
who, if he were gone, could spring into the breach and carry 
on the war which compels, and shall compel, all material 
power to yield to science.” 

“ Your boast reminds me of the old lines — 

‘ I’ve a hundred captains in England,’ he said, 

‘ As good as ever was he.’ ” 

At her father’s quotation Margaret looked suddenly up, 
with inquiring wonder in her eyes. How in the world had 
they got from cog-wheels to Chevy Chase ? 

“It is no boast of mine,” replied Mr. Thornton ; “ it is 
plain matter-of-fact. I won’t deny that I am proud of be- 
longing to a town — or perhaps I should rather say a district 
— the necessities of which give birth to such grandeur of 
conception. I would rather be a man toiling, suffering — - 
nay, failing and successless — here, than lead a dull pros- 
perous life in the old worn grooves of what you call more 
aristocratic society down in the South, with their slow days 
of careless ease. One may be clogged with honey and 
unable to rise and fly.” 

“You are mistaken,” said Margaret, roused by the 
aspersion on her beloved South to a fond vehemence of 
defence, that brought the colour into her cheeks and the 
angry tears into her eyes. “ You do not know anything 
about the South. If there is less adventure or less progress 
— I suppose I must not say less excitement — from the 
gambling spirit of trade, which seems requisite to force out 
these wonderful inventions, there is less suffering also. 
I see men here going about in the streets who look ground 

93 


North and South 

down by some pinching sorrow or care — who are not only 
sufferers but haters. Now, in the South we have our poor, 
but there is not that terrible expression in their countenances 
of a sullen sense of injustice which I see here. You do not 
know the South, Mr. Thornton,” she concluded, collap'sing 
into a determined silence, and angry with herself for having 
said so much. 

“ And may I say you do not know the North ? ” asked he, 
with an inexpressible gentleness in his tone, as he saw that 
he had really hurt her. She continued resolutely silent ; 
yearning after the lovely haunts she had left far away in 
Hampshire, with a passionate longing that made her feel her 
voice would be unsteady and trembling if she spoke. 

“ At any rate, Mr. Thornton,” said Mrs. Hale, “ you will 
allow that Milton is a much more smoky, dirty town than 
you will ever meet with in the South.” 

“ I’m afraid I must give up its cleanliness,” said Mr. 
Thornton, with the quick, gleaming smile. “ But we are 
bidden by Parliament to burn our own smoke ; so I suppose, 
like good little children, we shall do as we are bid — some 
time.” 

“ But I think you told me you had altered your 
chimneys so as to consume the smoke, did you not ? ” asked 
Mr. Hale. 

“ Mine were altered by my own will, before Parliament 
meddled with the affair. It was an immediate outlay, but it 
repays me in the saving of coal. I’m not sure whether I 
should have done it, if I had waited until the Act was passed. 
At any rate, I should have waited to be informed against 
and fined, and given all the trouble in yielding that I legally 
could. But all laws which depend for their enforcement 
upon informers and fines, become inert from the odiousness 
of the machinery. I doubt if there has been a chimney in 
Milton informed against for five years past, although some 
are constantly sending out one-third of their coal in what is 
called here unparliamentary smoke.” 

“ I only know it is impossible to keep the muslin blinds 
94 


Wrought Iron and Gold 

clean here above a week together ; and at Helstone we have 
had them up for a month or more, and they have not looked 
dirty at the end of that time. And as for hands — Margaret, 
how many times did you say you had washed your hands 
this morning before twelve o’clock? Three times, was it 
not ? ” 

“ Yes, mamma.” 

“ You seem to have a strong objection to Acts of Parlia- 
ment and all legislation affecting your mode of management 
down here at Milton,” said Mr. Hale. 

“ Yes, I have ; and many others have as well. And with 
justice, I think. The whole machinery — I don’t mean the 
wood and iron machinery now — of the cotton trade is so 
new that it is no wonder if it does not work well in every 
part all at once. Seventy years ago what was it ? And 
now what is it not ? Raw, crude materials came together ; 
men of the same level, as regarded education and station, 
took suddenly the different positions of masters and men, 
owing to the mother-wit, as regarded opportunities and 
probabilities, which distinguished some, and made them far- 
seeing as to what great future lay concealed in that rude 
model of Sir Richard Arkwright’s. The rapid development 
of what might be called a new trade, gave those early masters 
enormous power of wealth and command. I don’t mean 
merely over the workmen ; I mean over purchasers — over 
the whole world’s market. Why, I may give you, as an 
instance, an advertisement inserted not fifty years ago in a 
Milton paper, that so-and-so (one of the half-dozen calico- 
printers of the time) would close his warehouse at noon each 
day ; therefore, that all purchasers must come before that 
hour. Fancy a man dictating in this manner the time when 
he would sell and when he would not sell. Now, I believe, 
if a good customer chose to come at midnight, I should get 
up, and stand hat in hand to receive his orders.” 

Margaret’s lip curled, but somehow she was compelled 
to listen ; she could no longer abstract herself in her own 
thoughts. 


95 


North and South 

“ I only name such things to show what almost un- 
limited power the manufacturers had about the beginning of 
this century. The men were rendered dizzy by it. Because 
a man was successful in his ventures, there was no reason 
that in all other things his mind should be well-balanced. 
On the contrary, his sense of justice, and his simplicity, 
were often utterly smothered under the glut of wealth that 
came down upon him; and they tell strange tales of the 
wild extravagance of living indulged in on gala-days by 
those early cotton-lords. There can be no doubt, too, of the 
tyranny they exercised over their work-people. You know 
the proverb, Mr. Hale, ‘ Set a beggar on horseback, and he’ll 
ride to the devil ’ — well, some of these early manufacturers 
did ride to the devil in a magnificent style — crushing human 
bone and flesh under their horses’ hoofs without remorse. 
But by-and-by came a reaction ; there were more factories, 
more masters; more men were wanted. The power of 
masters and men became more evenly balanced ; and now 
the battle is pretty fairly waged between us. We will 
hardly submit to the decision of an umpire, much less to the 
interference of a meddler with only a smattering of the 
knowledge of the real facts of the case, even though that 
meddler be called the High Court of Parliament.” 

“ Is there necessity for calling it a battle between the 
two classes ? ” asked Mr. Hale. “ I know, from your using 
the term, it is one which gives a true idea of the real state of 
things to your mind.” 

“It is true ; and I believe it to be as much a necessity as 
that prudent wisdom and good conduct are always opposed 
to, and doing battle with, ignorance and improvidence. It is 
one of the great beauties of our system, that a working-man 
may raise himself into the power and position of a master 
by his own exertions and behaviour ; that, in fact, every one 
who rules himself to decency and sobriety of conduct, and 
attention to his duties, comes over to our ranks ; it may not 
be always as a master, but as an overlooker, a cashier, 
a book-keeper, a clerk, one on the side of authority and order.” 

96 


Wrought Iron and Gold 

“You consider all who are unsuccessful in raising them- 
selves in the world, from whatever cause, as your enemies, 
then, if I understand you rightly,” said Margaret, in a clear, 
cold voice. 

“ As their own enemies, certainly,” said he quickly, not 
a little piqued by the haughty disapproval her form of ex- 
pression and tone of speaking implied. But, in a moment, 
his straightforward honesty made him feel that his words 
were but a poor and quibbling answer to what she had said ; 
and, be she as scornful as she liked, it was a duty he owed 
to himself to explain, as truly as he could, what he did 
mean. Yet it was very difficult to separate her interpreta- 
tion, and keep it distinct, from his meaning. He could best 
have illustrated what he wanted to say by telling them 
something of his own life ; but was it not too personal a 
subject to speak about to strangers? Still, it was the 
simple straightforward way of explaining his meaning; so, 
putting aside the touch of shyness that brought a momentary 
flush of colour into his dark cheek, he said — 

“ I am not speaking without book. Sixteen years ago, 
my father died under very miserable circumstances. I was 
taken from school, and had to become a man (as well as I 
could) in a few days. I had such a mother as few are blest 
with ; a woman of strong power, and firm resolve. We went 
into a small country town, where living was cheaper than 
in Milton, and where I got employment in a draper’s shop 
(a capital place, by the way, for obtaining a knowledge of 
goods). Week by week, our income came to fifteen shillings, 
out of which three people had to be kept. My mother 
managed so that I put by three out of these fifteen shillings 
regularly. This made the beginning; this taught me self- 
denial. Now that I am able to afford my mother such 
comforts as her age, rather than her own wish, requires, I 
thank her silently on each occasion for the early training 
she gave me. Now, when I feel that in my own case it is 
no good luck, nor merit, nor talent — but simply the habits of 
life which taught me to despise indulgences not thoroughly 

97 h 


North and South 

earned —indeed, never to think twice about them — I believe 
that this suffering, which Miss Hale says is impressed on 
the countenances of the people of Milton, is but the natural 
punishment of dishonestly- enjoyed pleasure, at some former 
period of their lives. I do not look on self-indulgent, 
sensual people as worthy of my hatred ; I simply look upon 
them with contempt for their poorness of character.” 

“ But you have had the rudiments of a good education,” 
remarked Mr. Hale. “ The quick zest with which you are 
now reading Homer, shows me that you do not come to 
it as an unknown book : you have read it before, and are 
only recalling your old knowledge.” 

“ That is true — I had blundered along it at school ; I dare 
say, I was even considered a pretty fair classic in those days, 
though my Latin and Greek have slipt away from me since. 
But I ask you what preparation they were for such a life 
as I had to lead? None at all. Utterly none at all. On 
the point of education, any man who can read and write 
starts fair with me in the amount of really useful knowledge 
that I had at that time.” 

“ Well ! I don’t agree with you. But there I am perhaps 
somewhat of a pedant. Did not the recollection of the 
heroic simplicity of the Homeric life nerve you up ? ” 

“Not one bit ! ” exclaimed Mr. Thornton, laughing. “ I 
was too busy to think about any dead people, with the 
living pressing alongside of me, neck to neck, in the 
struggle for bread. Now that I have my mother safe in 
the quiet peace that becomes her age, and duly rewards her 
former exertions, I can turn to all that old narration and 
thoroughly enjoy it.” 

“I dare say, my remark came from the professional 
feeling of there being nothing like leather,” replied Mr. 
Hale. 

When Mr. Thornton rose up to go away, after shaking 
hands with Mr. and Mrs. Hale, he made an advance to 
Margaret to wish her good-bye in a similar manner. It was 
the frank familiar custom of the place ; but Margaret was 

98 


First Impressions 

not prepared for it. She simply bowed her farewell; 
although the instant she saw the hand, half put out, quickly 
drawn back, she was sorry she had not been aware of the 
intention. Mr. Thornton, however, knew nothing of her 
sorrow, and, drawing himself up to his full height, walked 
off, muttering as he left the house — ■ 

“ A more proud, disagreeable girl I never saw. Even 
her great beauty is blotted out of one’s memory by her 
scornful ways.” 


CHAPTER XI 

FIRST IMPRESSIONS 

“ There’s iron, they say, in all our blood, 

And a grain or two perhaps is good ; 

But his, he makes me harshly feel, 

Has got a little too much of steel.” 

Anon. 

“ Margaret ! said Mr. Hale as he returned from showing, 
his guest downstairs ; “I could not help watching your face 
with some anxiety, when Mr. Thornton made his confession 
of having been a shop-boy. I knew it all along from Mr. 
Bell, so I was aware of what was coming ; but I half 
expected to see you get up and leave the room.” 

“ Oh, papa ! you don’t mean that you thought me so 
silly ? I really liked that account of himself better than any- 
thing else he said. Everything else revolted me, from its 
hardness ; but he spoke about himself so simply — with so 
little of the pretence that makes the vulgarity of shop-people, 
and with such tender respect for his mother, that I was less 
likely to leave the room then than when he was boasting 
about Milton, as if there was not such another place in the 
world ; or quietly professing to despise people for careless, 
wasteful improvidence, without ever seeming to think it his 

99 


North and South 

duty to try to make them different — to give them anything 
of the training which his mother gave him, and to which he 
evidently owes his position, whatever that may be. No ! his 
statement of having been a shop-boy was the thing I liked 
best of all.” 

“ I am surprised at you, Margaret,” said her mother. 

“ You who were always accusing people of being shoppy at 
Jlelstone ! I don’t think, Mr. Hale, you have done quite 
right in introducing such a person to us without telling us 
what he had been. I really was very much afraid of show- 
ing him how much shocked I was at some parts of what he 
said. His father ‘ dying in miserable circumstances.’ Why, 
it might have been in the workhouse.” 

“ I am not sure if it was not worse than being in the 
workhouse,” replied her husband. “ I heard a good deal of 
his previous life from Mr. Bell before we came here ; and, as 
he has told you a part, I will fill up what he left out. His 
father speculated wildly, failed, and then killed himself, 
because he could not bear the disgrace. All his former 
friends shrunk from the disclosures that had to be made of 
his dishonest gambling — wild, hopeless struggles, made with 
other people’s money, to regain his own moderate portion of 
wealth. No one came forward to help the mother and this 
boy. There was another child, I believe, a girl ; too young 
to earn money, but of course she had to be kept. At least, 
no friend came forward immediately ; and Mrs. Thornton is 
not one, I fancy, to wait till tardy kindness comes to find her 
out. So they left Milton. I knew he had gone into a shop, 
and that his earnings, with some fragment of property 
secured to his mother, had been made to keep them for a 
long time. Mr. Bell said they absolutely lived upon water- 
porridge for years — how, he did not know ; but, long after 
the creditors had given up hope of any payment of old Mr. 
Thornton’s debts (if, indeed, they ever had hoped at all about 
it, after his suicide), this young man returned to Milton, and 
went quietly round to each creditor, paying him the first 
instalment of the money owing to him. No noise — no 


ioo 


First Impressions 

gathering together of creditors — it was done very silently and 
quietly, but all was paid at last ; helped on materially by 
the circumstance of one of the creditors, a crabbed old 
fellow (Mr. Bell says), taking in Mr. Thornton as a kind 
of partner.” 

“ That really is fine,” said Margaret. “ What a pity such 
a nature should be tainted by his position as a Milton 
manufacturer.” 

“ How tainted ? ” asked her father. 

“ Oh, papa, by that testing everything by the standard of 
wealth. When he spoke of the mechanical powers, he 
evidently looked upon them only as new ways of extending 
trade and making money. And the poor men around him — 
they were poor because they were vicious — out of the pale 
of his sympathies because they had not his iron nature, and 
the capabilities that it gives him for being rich.” 

“ Not vicious ; he never said that. Improvident and 
self-indulgent, were his words.” 

Margaret was collecting her mother’s working materials, 
and preparing to go to bed. Just as she was leaving the 
room, she hesitated — she was inclined to make an acknow- 
ledgment which she thought would please her father, but 
which to be full and true must include a little annoyance. 
However, out it came. 

“ Papa, I do think Mr. Thornton a very remarkable man ; 
but personally I don’t like him at all.” 

“ And I do ! ” said her father, laughing. “ Personally, as 
you call it, and all. I don’t set him up for a hero, or any- 
thing of that kind. But good-night, child. Your mother 
looks sadly tired to-night, Margaret.” 

Margaret had noticed her mother’s jaded appearance with 
anxiety for some time past, and this remark of her father’s 
sent her up to bed with a dim fear lying like a weight on her 
heart. The life in Milton was so different from what Mrs. 
Hale had been accustomed to live in Helstone, in and out 
perpetually into the fresh and open air ; the air itself was so 
different, deprived of all revivifying principle as it seemed to 

IOI 


North and South 

be here ; the domestic worries pressed so very closely, and in 
so new and sordid a form, upon all the women in the family, 
that there was good reason to fear that her mother’s health 
might be becoming seriously affected. There were several 
other signs of something wrong about Mrs. Hale. She and 
Dixon held mysterious consultations in her bedroom, from 
which Dixon would come out crying and cross, as was her 
custom when any distress of her mistress called upon her 
sympathy. Once Margaret had gone into the chamber soon 
after Dixon left it, and found her mother on her knees ; and, 
as Margaret stole out, she caught a few words, which were 
evidently a prayer for strength and patience to endure severe 
bodily suffering. Margaret yearned to re-unite the bond of 
intimate confidence which had been broken by her long 
residence at her aunt Shaw’s, and strove by gentle caresses 
and softened words to creep into the warmest place in her 
mother’s heart. But, though she received caresses and fond 
words back again, in such profusion as would have gladdened 
her formerly, yet she felt that there was a secret withheld 
from her, and she believed it bore serious reference to her 
mother’s health. She lay awake very long this night, plan- 
ning how to lessen the evil influence of their Milton life on 
her mother. A servant to give Dixon permanent assistance 
should be got, if she gave up her whole time to the search ; 
and then, at any rate, her mother might have all the personal 
attention she required, and had been accustomed to her 
whole life. 

Visiting register offices, seeing all manner of unlikely 
people, and very few in the least likely, absorbed Margaret’s 
time and thoughts for several days. One afternoon she 
met Bessy Higgins in the street, and stopped to speak to 
her. 

“Well, Bessy, how are you? Better, I hope, now the 
wind has changed.” 

“ Better and not better, if yo’ know what that means.” 

“ Not exactly,” replied Margaret, smiling. 

u I'm better in not being tom to pieces by coughing o’ 
102 


First Impressions 

nights, but I’m weary and tired o’ Milton, and longing to get 
away to the land o’ Beulah ; and, when I think I’m farther 
and farther off, my heart sinks, and I’m no better; I’m 
worse.” 

Margaret turned round to walk alongside of the girl in her 
feeble progress homeward. But for a minute or two she did 
not speak. At last she said in a low voice — 

“ Bessy, do you wish to die ? ” For she shrank from 
death herself, with all the clinging to life so natural to the 
young and healthy. 

Bessy was silent in her turn for a minute or two. Then 
she replied — 

“ If yo’d led the life I have, and getten as weary of it as 
I have, and thought at times, ‘ maybe it’ll last for fifty or 
sixty years’ — it does wi’ some — and got dizzy and dazed, 
and sick, as each of them sixty years seemed to spin about 
me, and mock me with its length of hours and minutes, and 
endless bits o’ time — oh, wench ! I tell thee thou’d been glad 
enough when th’ doctor said he feared thou’d never see 
another winter.” 

“ Why, Bessy, what kind of a life has yours been ? ” 

“ Nought worse than many others’, I reckon. Only I 
fretted again’ it, and they didn’t.” 

“ But what was it ? You know, I’m a stranger here, so 
perhaps I’m not so quick at understanding what you mean 
as if I’d lived all my life at Milton.” 

“ If yo’d ha’ come to our house when yo’ said yo’ would, 

I could maybe ha’ told you. But father says yo’re just like 
th’ rest on ’em ; it’s out o’ sight out o’ mind wi’ you.” 

“ I don’t know who the rest are ; and I’ve been very busy ; 
and, to tell the truth, I had forgotten my promise ” 

“ Yo’ offered it ; we asked none of it.” 

“I had forgotten what I said, for the time,” continued 
Margaret quietly. “ I should have thought of it again when 
I was less busy. May I go with you now ? ” 

Bessy gave a quick glance at Margaret’s face, to see if 
the wish expressed was really felt. The sharpness in her 

103 


North and South 

eye turned to a wistful longing, as she met Margaret’s soft 
and friendly gaze. 

“ I ha’ none so many to care for me ; if yo’ care yo’ may 
come.” 

So they walked on together in silence. As they turned 
up into a small court, opening out of a squalid street, Bessy 
said — 

“ Yo’ll not be daunted if father’s at home, and speaks a 
bit gruffish at first. He took a mind to ye, yo’ see, and he 
thought a deal o’ your coming to see us ; and just because 
he liked yo’ he were vexed and put about.” 

“Don’t fear, Bessy.” 

But Nicholas was not at home when they entered. A 
great slatternly girl, not so old as Bessy, but taller and 
stronger, was busy at the wash-tub, knocking about the 
furniture in a rough capable way, but altogether making so 
much noise that Margaret shrunk, out of sympathy with 
poor Bessy, who had sat down on the first chair, as if 
completely tired out with her walk. Margaret asked the 
sister for a cup of water; and, while she ran to fetch it 
(knocking down the fire-irons, and tumbling over a chair 
in her way), she unloosed Bessy’s bonnet strings, to relieve 
her catching breath. 

“ Do you think such life as this is worth caring for ? ” 
gasped Bessy, at last. Margaret did not speak, but held the 
water to her lips. Bessy took a long and feverish draught, 
and then fell back and shut her eyes. Margaret heard her 
murmur to herself : “ They shall hunger no more, neither 
thirst any more ; neither shall the sun light on them, nor 
any heat.” 

Margaret bent over and said, “ Bessy, don’t be impatient 
with your life, whatever it is — or may have been. Bemember 
Who gave it you, and made it what it is ! ” 

She was startled by hearing Nicholas speak behind her ; 
he had come in without her noticing him. 

“ Now, I’ll not have my wench preached to. She’s bad 
enough, as it is, with her dreams and her Methodee fancies, 

104 


First Impressions 

and her visions of cities with goulden gates and precious 
stones. But if it amuses her I let it abe ; but I’m none going 
to have more stuff poured into her.” 

“ But surely,” said Margaret, facing round, “ you believe 
in what I said, that God gave her life, and ordered what kind 
of life it was to be ? ” 

“ I believe what I see, and no more. That’s what I 
believe, young woman. I don’t believe all I hear — no ! not 
by a big deal. I did hear a young lass make an ado about 
knowing where we lived, and coming to see us. And my 
wench here thought a deal about it, and flushed up many a 
time, when hoo little knew as I was looking at her, at the 
sound of a strange step. But hoo’s come at last — and hoo’s 
welcome, as long as hoo’ll keep from preaching on what hoo 
knows nought about.” 

Bessy had been watching Margaret’s face ; she half sate 
up to speak now, laying her hand on Margaret’s arm with 
a gesture of entreaty. “ Don’t be vexed wi’ him — there’s 
many a one thinks like him ; many and many a one here. 
If yo’ could hear them speak, yo’d not be shocked at him ; 
he’s a rare good man, is father — but oh ! ” said she, falling 
back in despair, “ what he says at times makes me long to 
die more than ever, for I want to know so many things, and 
am so tossed about wi’ wonder.” 

“ Poor wench — poor old wench — I’m loth to vex thee, 
I am ; but a man mun speak out for the truth ; and, when I 
see the world going all wrong at this time o’ day, bothering 
itself wi’ things it knows nought about, and leaving undone 
all the things that lie in disorder close at its hand — why, 
I say, leave a’ this talk about religion alone, and set to work 
on what yo’ see and know. That’s my creed. It’s simple, 
and not far to fetch, nor hard to work.” 

But the girl only pleaded the more with Margaret. 

“Don’t think hardly on him— he’s a good man, he is. 
I sometimes think I shall be moped wi’ sorrow even in the 
City of God, if father is not there.” The feverish colour 
came into her cheek ; and the feverish flame into her eye. 


North and South 

“ But you will be there, father ! you shall ! Oh ! my heart ! ” 
She put her hand to it, and became ghastly pale. 

Margaret held her in her arms, and put the weary head 
to rest upon her bosom. She lifted the thin soft hair from 
off the temples, and bathed them with water. Nicholas 
understood all her signs for different articles with the quick- 
ness of love, and even the round-eyed sister moved with 
laborious gentleness at Margaret’s “ hush ! ” Presently the 
spasm that fore-shadowed death had passed away, and Bessy 
roused herself and said — 

“ I’ll go to bed — it’s best place ; but,” catching at 
Margaret’s gown, “ yo’ll come again, — I know yo’ will — but 
just say it ! ” 

“ I will come to-morrow,” said Margaret. 

Bessy leant back against her father, who prepared to 
carry her upstairs ; but, as Margaret rose to go, he struggled 
to say something : “I could wish there were a God, if it 
were only to ask Him to bless thee.” 

Margaret went away very sad and thoughtful. 

She was late for tea at home. At Helstone unpunctuality 
at meal-times was a great fault in her mother’s eyes; but 
now this, as well as many other little irregularities, seemed 
to have lost their power of irritation, and Margaret almost 
longed for the old complainings. 

“ Have you met with a servant, dear ? ” 

“No, mamma, that Anne Buckley would never have done.” 

“ Suppose I try,” said Mr. Hale. “ Everybody else has 
had their turn at this great difficulty. Now let me try. I 
may be the Cinderella to put on the slipper after all.” 

Margaret could hardly smile at this little joke, so oppressed 
was she by her visit to the Higginses. 

“ What would you do, papa ? How would you set 
about it ? ” 

“ Why, I would apply to some good house-mother to 
recommend me one known to herself or her servants.” 

“ Very good. But we must first catch our house- 
mother.” 


106 


First Impressions 

“ You have caught her. Or rather she is coming into the 
snare, and you will catch her to-morrow, if you’re skilful.” 

“ What do you mean, Mr- Hale ? ” asked his wife, her 
curiosity aroused. 

“ Why, my paragon pupil (as Margaret calls him) has 
told me that his mother intends to call on Mrs. and Miss 
Hale to-morrow.” 

“ Mrs. Thornton ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Hale. 

“ The mother of whom he spoke to us ? ” said Margaret. 

“ Mrs. Thornton ; the only mother he has, I believe,” 
said Mr. Hale quietly. 

“ I shall like to see her. She must be an uncommon 
person,” her mother added. “ Perhaps she may have a 
relation who might suit us, and be glad of our place. She 
sounded to be such a careful, economical person, that I should 
like any one out of the same family.” 

“ My dear,” said Mr. Hale, alarmed. “ Pray don’t go 
off on that idea. I fancy Mrs. Thornton is as haughty and 
proud in her way as our little Margaret here is in hers, 
and that she completely ignores that old time of trial, and 
poverty, and economy, of which he speaks so openly. I am 
sure, at any rate, she would not like strangers to know 
anything about it.” 

“ Take notice that it is not my kind of haughtiness, papa, 
if I have any at all ; which I don’t agree to, though you’re 
always accusing me of it.” 

“ I don’t know positively that it is hers either ; but, from 
little things I have gathered from him, I fancy so.” 

They cared too little to ask in what manner her son had 
spoken about her. Margaret only wanted to know if she 
must stay in to receive this call, as it would prevent her 
going to see how Bessy was, until late in the day, since the 
early morning was always occupied in household affairs ; 
and then she recollected that her mother must not be left 
to have the whole weight of entertaining her visitor. 


107 


North and South 


on A FTER XII 

MORNING CALLS 

“ Well — I suppose we must.” 

Friends in Council. 

Mr. Thornton had had some difficulty in working up his 
mother to the desired point of civility. She did not often 
make calls ; and when she did, it was in heavy state that 
she went through her duties. Her son had given her a 
carriage ; but she refused to let him keep horses for it ; they 
were hired for the solemn occasions when she paid morning 
or evening visits. She had had horses for three days, not a 
fortnight before, and had comfortably “killed off” all her 
acquaintances, who might now put themselves to trouble 
and expense in their turn. Yet Crampton was too far off 
for her to walk ; and she had repeatedly questioned her son 
as to whether his wish that she should call on the Hales was 
strong enough to bear the expense of cab-hire. She would 
have been thankful if it had not ; for, as she said, “ She saw 
no use in making up friendships and intimacies with all the 
teachers and masters in Milton ; why, he would be wanting 
her to call on Fanny’s dancing-master’s wife, the next 
thing ! ” 

“ And so I would, mother, if Mr. Mason and his wife 
were friendless in a strange place, like the Hales.” 

“ Oh ! you need not speak so hastily. I am going to- 
morrow. I only wanted you exactly to understand about it.” 

“ If you are going to-morrow, I shall order horses.” 

“ Nonsense, John. One would think you were made of 
money.” 

“ Not quite, yet. But about the horses I’m determined. 
The last time you were out in a cab, you came home with a 
headache from the jolting.” 

“ I never complained of it, I’m sure.” 

108 


Morning Calls 

“ No ! My mother is not given to complaints,” said he, 
a little proudly. “ But so much the more I have to watch 
over you. Now, as for Fanny there, a little hardship would 
do her good.” 

“ She is not made of the same stuff as you are, John. 
She could not bear it.” 

Mrs. Thornton was silent after this ; for her last words 
bore relation to a subject which mortified her. She had an 
unconscious contempt for a weak character; and Fanny 
was weak in the very points in which her mother and brother 
were strong. Mrs. Thornton was not a woman much given 
to reasoning ; her quick judgment and firm resolution served 
her in good stead of any long arguments and discussions 
with herself ; she felt instinctively that nothing could 
strengthen Fanny to endure hardships patiently, or face 
difficulties bravely; and, though she winced as she made 
this acknowledgment to herself about her daughter, it only 
gave her a kind of pitying tenderness of manner towards 
her : much of the same description of demeanour with 
which mothers are wont to treat their weak and sickly 
children. A stranger, a careless observer, might have con- 
sidered that Mrs. Thornton’s manner to her children be- 
tokened far more love to Fanny than to John. But such 
a one would have been deeply mistaken. The very daring- 
ness with which mother and son spoke out unpalatable 
truths, the one to the other, showed a reliance on the firm 
centre of each other’s souls ; which the uneasy tenderness 
of Mrs. Thornton’s manner to her daughter, the shame with 
which she thought to hide the poverty of her child in all 
the grand qualities which she herself possessed unconsciously, 
and which she set so high a value upon in others — this 
shame, I say, betrayed the want of a secure resting-place 
for her affection. She never called her son by any name 
but “ John ” ; “ love,” and “ dear,” and such like terms, were 
reserved for Fanny. But her heart gave thanks for him 
day and night ; and she walked proudly among women for 
his sake. 

109 


North and South 

“ Fanny dear ! I shall have horses to the carriage to-day, 
to go and call on these Hales. Should not you go and see 
nurse? It’s in the same direction, and she’s always so 
glad to see you. You could go on there while I am at 
Mrs. Hale’s.” 

“ Oh! mamma, it’s such a long way, and I am so tired.” 

“ With what ? ” asked Mrs. Thornton, her brow slightly 
contracting. 

“ I don’t know — the weather, I think. It is so relaxing. 
Couldn’t you bring nurse here, mamma? The carriage 
could fetch her, and she could spend the rest of the day 
here, which I know she would like.” 

Mrs. Thornton did not speak; but she laid her work 
on the table and seemed to think. 

“ It will be a long way for her to walk back at night ! ” 
she remarked, at last. 

“ Oh, but I will send her home in a cab. I never thought 
of her walking.” 

At this point, Mr. Thornton came in, just before going 
to the mill. 

“ Mother ! I need hardly say, that if there is any little 
thing that could serve Mrs. Hale as an invalid, you will 
offer it, I’m sure.” 

“ If I can find it out, I will. But I have never been ill 
myself, so I am not much up to invalids’ fancies.” 

“ Well ! here is Fanny then, who is seldom without an 
ailment. She will be able to suggest something, perhaps — 
won’t you, Fan ? ” 

“ I have not always an ailment,” said Fanny pettishly ; 
“ and I am not going with mamma. I have a headache 
to-day, and I shan’t go out.” 

Mr. Thornton looked annoyed. His mother’s eyes were 
bent on her work, at which she was now stitching away 
busily. 

“ Fanny ! I wish you to go,” said he authoritatively. “ It 
will do you good, instead of harm. You will oblige me by 
going, without my saying anything more about it.” 


no 


Morning Calls 

He went abruptly out of the room after saying this. 

If he had stayed a minute longer, Fanny would have 
cried at his tone of command, even when he used the words, 
“You will oblige me.” As it was, she grumbled. 

“John always speaks as if I fancied I was ill, and I am 
sure I never do fancy any such thing. Who are these Hales 
that he makes such a fuss about ? ” 

“ Fanny, don’t speak so of your brother. He has good 
reasons of some kind or other, or he would not wish us to 
go. Make haste and put your things on.” 

But the little altercation between her son and her 
daughter did not incline Mrs. Thornton more favourably 
towards “these Hales.” Her jealous heart repeated her 
daughter’s question, “ Who are they, that he is so anxious 
we should pay them all this attention ? ” It came up like 
a burden to a song, long after Fanny had forgotten all about 
it in the pleasant excitement of seeing the effect of a new 
bonnet in the looking-glass. 

Mrs. Thornton was shy. It was only of late years that 
she had had leisure enough in her life to go into society ; 
and as society she did not enjoy it. As dinner-giving, and 
as criticising other people’s dinners, she took satisfaction 
in it. But this going to make acquaintance with strangers 
was a very different thing. She was ill at ease, and looked 
more than usually stern and forbidding as she entered the 
Hales’ little drawing-room. 

Margaret was busy embroidering a small piece of cambric 
for some little article of dress for Edith’s expected baby — 
“ Flimsy, useless work,” as Mrs. Thornton observed to 
herself. She liked Mrs. Hale’s double knitting far better; 
that was sensible of its kind. The room altogether was 
full of knick-knacks, which must take a long time to dust ; 
and time to people of limited income was money. 

She made all these reflections as she was talking in her 
stately way to Mrs. Hale, and uttering all the stereotyped 
commonplaces that most people can find to say with their 
senses blindfolded. Mrs. Hale was making rather more 

hi 


North and South 

exertion in her answers, captivated by some real old lace 
which Mrs. Thornton wore; “lace,” as she afterwards 
observed to Dixon, “ of that old English point which has not 
been made for this two hundred years, and which cannot 
be bought. It must have been an heir-loom, and shows 
that she had ancestors.” So the owner of the ancestral 
lace became worthy of something more than the languid 
exertion to be agreeable . to a visitor, by which Mrs. Hale’s 
efforts at conversation would have been otherwise bounded. 
And presently, Margaret, racking her brain to talk to 
Fanny, heard her mother and Mrs. Thornton plunge into 
the interminable subject of servants. 

“ I suppose you are not musical,” said Fanny, “ as I see 
no piano.” 

“ I am fond of hearing good music ; I cannot play well 
myself; and papa and mamma don’t care much about it; 
so we sold our old piano when we came here.” 

“ I wonder how you can exist without one. It almost 
seems to me a necessary of life.” 

“ Fifteen shillings a week, and three saved out of them ! ” 
thought Margaret to herself. “ But she must have been 
very young. She probably has forgotten her own personal 
experience. But she must know of those days.” Margaret’s 
manner had an extra tinge of coldness in it when she next 
spoke. 

“ You have good concerts here, I believe.” 

“ Oh, yes ! Delicious ! Too crowded, that is the worst. 
The directors admit so indiscriminately. But one is sure 
to hear the newest music there. I always have a large 
order to give to Johnson’s, the day after a concert.” 

“ Do you like new music simply for its newness, then ? ” 

“ Oh, one knows it is the fashion in London, or else the 
singers would not bring it down here. You have been in 
London, of course.” 

“ Yes,” said Margaret, “ I have lived there for several years.” 

" Oh ! London and the Alhambra are the two places 
I long to see ! ” 


1 12 


Morning Calls 

“ London and the Alhambra ! ” 

“ Yes ! ever since I read the Tales of the Alhambra. 
Don’t you know them ? ” 

“ I don’t think I do. But surely, it is a very easy 
journey to London.” 

“ Yes ; but somehow,” said Fanny, lowering her voice, 
“ mamma has never been to London herself, and can’t 
understand my longing. She is very proud of Milton ; dirty, 
smoky place, as I feel it to be. I believe she admires it 
the more for those very qualities.” 

“ If it has been Mrs. Thornton’s home for some years, I 
can well understand her loving it,” said Margaret, in her 
clear bell-like voice. 

“ What are you saying about me, Miss Hale ? May I 
inquire ? ” 

Margaret had not the words ready for an answer to this 
question, which took her a little by surprise, so Miss Thornton 
replied — 

“ Oh, mamma ! we are only trying to account for your 
being so fond of Milton.” 

“ Thank you,” said Mrs. Thornton. “ I do not feel that 
my very natural liking for the place where I was born and 
brought up — and which has since been my residence for 
some years, requires any accounting for.” 

Margaret was vexed. As Fanny had put it, it did seem 
as if they had been impertinently discussing Mrs. Thornton’s 
feelings ; but she also rose up against that lady’s manner of 
showing that she was offended. 

Mrs. Thornton went on after a moment’s pause — 

“ Do you know anything of Milton, Miss Hale ? Have 
you seen any of our factories ? our magnificent warehouses ? ” 

“ No ! ” said Margaret. “ I have not see anything of 
that description as yet.” 

Then she felt that, by concealing her utter indifference to 
all such places, she was hardly speaking with truth ; so she 
went on — 

“ I dare say, papa would have taken me before now if 

113 1 


North and South 

I had cared. But I really do not find much pleasure in 
going over manufactories.” 

“ They are very curious places,” said Mrs. Hale, “ but 
there is so much noise and dirt always. I remember once 
going in a lilac silk to see candles made, and my gown was 
utterly ruined.” 

“Very probably,” said Mrs. Thornton, in a short, dis- 
pleased manner. “ I merely thought, that as strangers 
newly come to reside in a town which has risen to eminence 
in the country, from the character and progress of its peculiar 
business, you might have cared to visit some of the places 
where it is carried on ; places unique in the kingdom, I am 
informed. If Miss Hale changes her mind and condescends 
to be curious as to the manufactures of Milton, I can only 
say I shall be glad to procure her admission to print-works, 
or reed-making, or the more simple operations of spinning 
carried on in my son’s mill. Every improvement of machinery 
is, I believe, to be seen there, in its highest perfection.” 

“ I am so glad you don’t like mills and manufactories, 
and all those kind of things,” said Fanny, in a half -whisper, 
as she rose to accompany her mother, who was taking leave 
of Mrs. Hale with rustling dignity. 

“ I think I should like to know all about them, if I were 
you,” replied Margaret quietly. 

“ Fanny ! ” said her mother, as they drove away, “ we 
will be civil to these Hales ; but don’t form one of your 
hasty friendships with the daughter. She will do you no 
good, I see. The mother looks very ill, and seems a nice, 
quiet kind of person.” 

“ I don’t want to form any friendship with Miss Hale, 
mamma,” said Fanny, pouting. “ I thought I was doing 
my duty by talking to her, and trying to amuse her.” 

“ Well ! at any rate John must be satisfied now.” 


A Soft Breeze in a Sultry Place 


CHAPTEE XIII 

A SOFT BREEZE IN A SULTRY PLACE 

“ That doubt and trouble, fear and pain, 

And anguish, all, are shadows vain, 

That death itself shall not remain ; 

That weary deserts we may tread, 

A dreary labyrinth may thread, 

Thro’ dark ways underground be led ; 

Yet, if we will one Guide obey, 

The dreariest path, the darkest way 
Shall issue out in heavenly day ; 

And we, on divers shores now cast, 

Shall meet, our perilous voyage past, 

All in our Father’s house at last 1 ” 

R. C. Trench. 

Margaret flew upstairs as soon as their visitors were gone, 
and put on her bonnet and shawl, to run and inquire how 
Bessy Higgins was, and sit with her as long as she could 
before dinner. As she went along the crowded narrow streets, 
she felt how much of interest they had gained by the simple 
fact of her having learnt to care for a dweller in them. 

Mary Higgins, the slatternly younger sister, had en- 
deavoured as well as she could to tidy up the house for the 
expected visit. There had been rough-stoning done in the 
middle of the floor, while the flags under the chairs and table 
and round the walls retained their dark unwashed appear- 
ance. Although the day was hot, there burnt a large fire in 
the grate, making the whole place feel like an oven ; Mar- 
garet did not understand that the lavishness of coals was a 
sign of hospitable welcome to her on Mary’s part, and thought 
that perhaps the oppressive heat was necessary for Bessy. 
Bessy herself lay on a squab, or short sofa, placed under the 
window. She was very much more feeble than on the 

”5 


North and South 

previous day, and tired with raising herself at every step to 
look out and see if it was Margaret coming. And now that 
Margaret was there, and had taken a chair by her, Bessy lay 
back silent, content to look at Margaret’s face and touch 
her articles of dress, with a childish admiration of their 
fineness of texture. 

“ I never knew why folk in the ' Bible cared for soft 
raiment afore. But it must be nice to go dressed as yo’ do. 
It’s different fro’ common. Most fine folk tire my eyes out 
wi’ their colours ; but somehow yours rest me. Where did 
yo’ get this frock ? ” 

“ In London,” said Margaret, much amused. 

“ London ! Have yo’ been in London ? ” 

“ Yes ! I lived there for some years. But my home 
was in a forest ; in the country.” 

“ Tell me about it,” said Bessy. “ I like to hear speak 
of the country, and trees, and such like things.” She leant 
back, and shut her eyes, and crossed her hands over her 
breast, lying at perfect rest, as if to receive all the ideas 
Margaret could suggest. 

Margaret had never spoken of Helstone since she left it, 
except just naming the place incidentally. She saw it in 
dreams more vivid than life, and as she fell away to slumber 
at nights her memory wandered in all its pleasant places. 
But her heart was opened to this girl : “ Oh, Bessy, I love 
the home we have left so dearly ! I wish you could see it. 
I cannot tell you half its beauty. There are great trees 
standing all about it, with their branches stretching long and 
level, and making a deep shade of rest even at noonday. 
And yet, though every leaf may seem still, there is a 
continual rushing sound of movement all around — not close 
at hand. Then sometimes the turf is as soft and fine as 
velvet ; and sometimes quite lush with the perpetual moisture 
of a little, hidden, tinkling brook near at hand. And then 
in other parts there are billowy ferns — whole stretches of 
fern ; some in the green shadow ; some with long streaks of 
golden sunlight lying on them — just like the sea.” 

116 


A Soft Breeze in a Sultry Place 

“ I have never seen the sea,” murmured Bessy. “ But 
go on.” 

“ Then here and there, there are wide commons, high up 
as if above the very tops of the trees ” 

“ I am glad of that. I felt smothered like down below. 
When I have gone for an out, I’ve always wanted to get 
high up and see far away, and take a deep breath o’ fulness 
in that air. I get smothered enough in Milton, and I think 
the sound yo’ speak of among the trees, going on for ever 
and ever, would send me dazed ; it’s that made my head 
ache so in the mill. Now on these commons, I reckon, 
there is but little noise ? ” 

“ No,” said Margaret ; “ nothing but here and there a 
lark high in the air. Sometimes I used to hear a farmer 
speaking sharp and loud to his servants ; but it was so far 
away that it only reminded me pleasantly that other people 
were hard at work in some distant place, while I just sat on 
the heather and did nothing.” 

“ I used to think once that if I could have a day of doing 
nothing, to rest me — a day in some quiet place like that yo’ 
speak on — it would maybe set me up. But now I’ve had 
many days o’ idleness, and I’m just as weary o’ them as I 
was o’ my work. Sometimes I’m so tired out I think I 
cannot enjoy heaven without a piece of rest first. I’m rather 
afeared o’ going straight there without getting a good sleep 
in the grave to set me up.” 

“ Don’t be afraid, Bessy,” said Margaret, laying her 
hand on the girl’s ; “ God can give you more perfect rest 
than even idleness on earth, or the dead sleep of the grave 
can do.” 

Bessy moved uneasily ; then she said — 

“ I wish father would not speak as he does. He means 
well, as I telled yo’ yesterday, and tell yo’ again and again. 
But yo’ see, though I don’t believe him a bit by day, yet by 
night — when I’m in a fever, half asleep and half awake— it 
comes back upon me — oh ! so bad ! And I think, if this 
should be th’ end of all, and if all I’ve been born for is just 

117 


North and South 

to work my heart and life away, and to sicken i’ this dree 
place, wi’ them mill-noises in my ears for ever, until I could 
scream out for them to stop, and let me have a little piece o’ 
quiet — and wi’ the fluff filling my lungs, until I thirst to 
death for one long deep breath o’ the clear air yo’ speak on 
— and my mother gone, and I never able to tell her again 
how I loved her, and o’ all my troubles — I think if this 
life is th’ end, and there's no God to wipe away all tears 
from all eyes — yo’ wench, yo’ ! ” said she, sitting up, and 
clutching violently, almost fiercely, at Margaret’s hand, “ I 
could go mad, and kill yo’, I could.” She fell back com- 
pletely worn out with her passion. Margaret knelt down 
by her. 

“ Bessy— we have a Father in Heaven.” 

“ I know it ! I know it,” moaned she, turning her head 
uneasily from side to side. “ I’m very wicked. I’ve spoken 
very wickedly. Oh ! don’t be frightened by me and never 
come again. I would not harm a hair of your head. And,” 
opening her eyes, and looking earnestly at Margaret, “ I 
believe, perhaps, more than yo’ do o’ what’s to come. I 
read the book o’ Revelations until I know it off by heart, and 
I never doubt when I’m waking, and in my senses, of all the 
glory I’m to come to.” 

“ Don’t let us talk of what fancies come into your head 
when you are feverish. I would rather hear something about 
what you used to do when you were well.” 

“ I think I was well when mother died, but I have never 
been rightly strong sin’ somewhere about that time. I began 
to work in a carding-room soon after, and the fluff got into 
my lungs and poisoned me.” 

“ Fluff! ” said Margaret inquiringly. 

“ Fluff,” repeated Bessy. “ Little bits, as fly off fro’ the 
cotton, when they’re carding it, and fill the air till it looks all 
fine white dust. They say it winds round the lungs, and 
tightens them up. Anyhow, there’s many a one as works in 
a carding-room, that falls into a waste, coughing and spitting 
blood, because they’re just poisoned by the fluff.” 

118 


A Soft Breeze in a Sultry Place 

“ But can’t it be helped ? ” asked Margaret. 

“ I dunno. Some folk have a great wheel at one end o’ 
their carding-rooms to make a draught, and carry off th’ 
dust; but that wheel costs a deal of money — five or six 
hundred pound, maybe, and brings in no profit ; so it’s but 
a few of th’ masters as will put ’em up ; and I’ve heard tell 
o’ men who didn’t like working in places where there was a 
wheel, because they said as how it made ’em hungry, at after 
they’d been long used to swallowing fluff, to go without it, 
and that their wage ought to be raised if ^they were to work 
in such places. So between masters and men th’ wheels fall 
through. I know I wish there’d been a wheel in our place, 
though.” 

“ Did not your father know about it ? ” asked Margaret. 

“ Yes ! And he was sorry. But our factory were a good 
one on the whole ; and a steady, likely set o’ people ; and 
father was afeard of letting me go to a strange place, for, 
though yo’ would na think it now, many a one then used to 
call me a gradely lass enough. And I did na like to be 
reckoned nesh and soft, and Mary’s schooling were to be kept 
up, mother said, and father he were always liking to buy 
books, and go to lectures o’ one kind or another — all which 
took money — so I just worked on till I shall ne’er get the 
whirr out o’ my ears, or the fluff out o’ my throat i’ this 
world. That’s all.” 

“ How old are you ? ” asked Margaret. 

“ Nineteen, come July.” 

“ And I too am nineteen.” She thought, more sorrow- 
fully than Bessy did, of the contrast between them. She 
could not speak for a moment or two for the emotion she was 
trying to keep down. 

“ About Mary,” said Bessy. “ I wanted to ask yo’ to be 
a friend to her. She’s seventeen, but she’s th’ last on us. 
And I don’t wailt her to go to th’ mill, and yet I dunno what 
she’s fit for.” 

“ She could not do ” — Margaret glanced unconsciously at 
the uncleaned corners of the room — “ She could hardly 

119 


North and South 

undertake a servant’s place, could she ? We have an old 
faithful servant, almost a friend, who wants help, but who is 
very particular ; and it would not be right to plague her with 
giving her any assistance that would really be an annoyance 
and an irritation.” 

“ No, I see. I reckon yo’re right. Our Mary’s a good 
wench ; but who has she had to teach her what to do about 
a house ? No mother, and me at the mill till I were good for 
nothing but scolding her for doing badly what I didn’t know 
how to do a bit. But I wish she could ha’ lived wi’ yo’, for 
all that.” 

“ But even though she may not be exactly fitted to come 
and five with us as a servant — -and I don’t know about that — 
I will always try and be a friend to her for your sake, Bessy. 
And now I must go. I will come again as soon as I can ; 
but if it should not be to-morrow, or the next day, or even a 
week or a fortnight hence, don’t think I’ve forgotten you. I 
may be busy.” 

“ I’ll know yo’ won’t forget me again. I’ll not mistrust 
yo’ no more. But remember, in a week or a fortnight I may 
be dead and buried ! ** 

“ I’ll come as soon as I can, Bessy,” said Margaret, 
squeezing her hand tight. “ But you’ll let me know if you 
are worse.” 

“ Ay, that will I,” said Bessy, returning the pressure. 

From that day forwards Mrs. Hale became more and 
more of a suffering invalid. It was now drawing near to the 
anniversary of Edith’s marriage, and, looking back upon the 
year’s accumulated heap of troubles, Margaret wondered how 
they had been borne. If she could have anticipated them, 
how she would have shrunk away and hidden herself from 
the coming time ! And yet day by day had, of itself, and by 
itself, been very endurable — small, keen, bright little spots of 
positive enjoyment having come sparkling into the very 
middle of sorrows. A year ago, or when she first went to 
Helstone, and first became silently conscious of the queru- 
lousness in her mother’s temper, she would have groaned 

120 


A Soft Breeze in a Sultry Place 

bitterly over the idea of a long illness to be borne in a strange, 
desolate, noisy, busy place, with diminished comforts on 
every side of the home life. But with the increase of serious 
and just ground of complaint, a new kind of patience had 
sprung up in her mother’s mind. She was gentle and quiet 
in intense bodily suffering, almost in proportion as she had 
been restless and depressed when there had been no real 
cause for grief. Mr. Hale was in exactly that stage of appre- 
hension which, in men of his stamp, takes the shape of 
wilful blindness. He was more irritated than Margaret had 
ever known him at his daughter’s expressed anxiety. 

“ Indeed, Margaret, you are growing fanciful ! God 
knows I should be the first to take the alarm if your mother 
were really ill ; we always saw when she had her headaches 
at Helstone, even without her telling us. She looks quite 
pale and white when she is ill ; and now she has a bright 
healthy colour in her cheeks, just as she used to have when 
I first knew her.” 

“ But, papa,” said Margaret, with hesitation, “ do you 
know, I think that is the flush of pain.” 

“ Nonsense, Margaret. I tell you, you are too fanciful. 
You are the person not well, I think. Send for the doctor 
to-morrow for yourself ; and then, if it will make your mind 
easier, he can see your mother.” 

“ Thank you, dear papa. It will make me happier, 
indeed.” And she went up to him to kiss him. But he 
pushed her away — gently enough, but still as if she had 
suggested unpleasant ideas, which he should be glad to get 
rid of as readily as he could of her presence. He walked 
uneasily up and down the room. 

“ Poor Maria ! ” said he, half soliloquising, “ I wish one 
could do right without sacrificing others. I shall hate this 

town, and myself too, if she Pray, Margaret, does your 

mother often talk to you of the old places : of Helstone, I 
mean ? ” 

“ No, papa,” said Margaret sadly. 

“ Then, you see, she can’t be fretting after them, eh ? It 
1 2 1 


North and South 

has always been a comfort to me to think that your mother 
was so simple and open that I knew every little grievance 
she had. She never would conceal anything seriously 
affecting her health from me : would she, eh, Margaret ? I 
am quite sure she would not. So don’t let me hear of these 
foolish morbid ideas. Come, give me a kiss, and run off to bed.” 

But she heard him pacing about (racooning, as she and 
Edith used to call it) long after her slow and languid un- 
dressing was finished — long after she began to listen as she 
lay in bed. 


CHAPTEE XIY 

THE MUTINY 

“ I was used 

To sleep at nights as sweetly as a child — 

Now, if the wind blew rough, it made m6 start, 

And think of my poor boy tossing about 
Upon the roaring seas. And then I seemed 
To feel that it was hard to take him from me 
For such a little fault.” 

Southey. 

It was a comfort to Margaret about this time, to find that 
her mother drew more tenderly and intimately towards her 
than she had ever done since the days of her childhood. 
She took her to her heart as a confidential friend — the post 
Margaret had always longed to fill, and had envied Dixon 
for being preferred to. Margaret took pains to respond to 
every call made upon her for sympathy — and they were 
many — even when they bore relation to trifles, which she 
would no more have noticed or regarded herself than the 
elephant would perceive the little pin at his feet, which yet 
he lifts carefully up at the bidding of his keeper. All 
unconsciously Margaret drew near to a reward. 


122 


The Mutiny 

One evening, Mr. Hale being absent, her mother began 
to talk to her about her brother Frederick, the very subject 
on which Margaret had longed to ask questions, and almost 
the only one on which her timidity overcame her natural 
openness. The more she wanted to hear about him, the less 
likely she was to speak. 

“ Oh, Margaret, it was so windy last night ! It came 
howling down the chimney in our room ! I could not sleep. 
I never can when there is such a terrible wind. I got into 
a wakeful habit when poor Frederick was at sea ; and now, 
if I don’t waken all at once, I dream of him in some stormy 
sea, with great, clear, glass-green walls of waves on either 
side his ship, but far higher than her very masts, curling 
over her with that cruel, terrible white foam, like some 
gigantic crested serpent. It is an old dream, but it always 
comes back on windy nights, till I am thankful to waken, 
sitting straight and stiff up in bed with my terror. Poor 
Frederick ! He is on land now, so wind can do him no 
harm. Though I did think it might shake down some of 
those tall chimneys.” 

“ Where is Frederick now, mamma ? Our letters are 
directed to the care of Messrs. Barbour, at Cadiz, I know ; 
but where is he himself ? ” 

“ I can’t remember the name of the place, but he is not 
called Hale; you must remember that, Margaret. Notice 
the F. D. in every corner of the letters. He has taken the 
name of Dickenson. I wanted him to have been called 
Beresford, to which he had a kind of right, but your father 
thought he had better not. He might be recognised, you 
know, if he were called by my name.” 

“ Mamma,” said Margaret, “ I was at Aunt Shaw’s when 
it all happened ; and I suppose I was not old enough to be 
told plainly about it. But I should like to know now, if I 
may — if it does not give you too much pain to speak about it.” 

“ Pain 1 No,” replied Mrs. Hale, her cheek flushing. 
“ Yet it is pain to think that perhaps I may never see my 
darling boy again. Or else he did right, Margaret. They 

123 


North and South 

may say what they like, but I have his own letters to show T , 
and I’ll believe him, though he is my son, sooner than any 
court-martial on earth. Go to my little Japan cabinet, dear, 
and in the second left-hand drawer you will find a packet of 
letters.” 

Margaret went. There were the yellow, sea-stained 
letters, with the peculiar fragrance which ocean letters have. 
Margaret carried them back to her mother, who untied the 
silken string with trembling fingers; and, examining their 
dates, she gave them to Margaret to read, making her 
hurried, anxious remarks on their contents, almost before 
her daughter could have understood what they were. 

“ You see, Margaret, how from the very first he disliked 
Captain Eeid. He was second lieutenant in the ship — the 
Orion — in which Frederick sailed the very first time. Poor 
little fellow, how well he looked in his midshipman’s dress, 
with his dirk in his hand, cutting open all the newspapers 
with it as if it were a paper-knife ! But this Mr. Reid, as 
he was then, seemed to take a dislike to Frederick from the 
very beginning. And then — stay! these are the letters he 
wrote on board the Russell. When he was appointed to her, 
and found his old enemy Captain Reid in command, he did 
mean to bear all his tyranny patiently. Look ! this is the 
letter. Just read it, Margaret. Where is it he says — Stop 
— My father may rely upon me, that I will bear with all 
proper patience everything that one officer and gentleman 
can take from another. But from my former knowledge of 
my present captain, I confess I look forward with appre- 
hension to a long course of tyranny on board the Russell .’ 
You see, he promises to bear patiently, and I am sure he 
did, for he was the sweetest-tempered boy, when he was not 
vexed, that could possibly be. Is that the letter in which he 
speaks of Captain Reid’s impatience with the men, for not 
going through the ship’s manoeuvres as quickly as the 
Avenger ? You see, he says that they had many new hands 
on board the Russell , while the Avenger had been nearly three 
years on the station, with nothing to do but to keep slavers 

124 


The Mutiny 

off, and work her men, till they ran up and down the rigging 
like rats or monkeys.” 

Margaret slowly read the letter, half illegible through the 
fading of the ink. It might be— it probably was — a state- 
ment of Captain Eeid’s imperiousness in trifles, very much 
exaggerated by the narrator, who had written it while fresh 
and warm from the scene of altercation. Some sailors 
being aloft in the main- topsail rigging, the captain had 
ordered them to race down, threatening the hindmost with 
the cat-of-nine tails. He who was the farthest on the spar, 
feeling the impossibility of passing his companions, and yet 
passionately dreading the disgrace of the flogging, threw 
himself desperately down to catch a rope considerably lower, 
failed, and fell senseless on deck. He only survived for 
a few hours afterwards, and the indignation of the ship’s 
crew was at boiling point when young Hale wrote. 

“ But we did not receive this letter till long, long after 
we heard of the mutiny. Poor Fred ! I dare say it was a 
comfort for him to write it, even though he could not have 
known how to send it, poor fellow ! And then we saw a 
report in the papers — that’s to say, long before Fred’s letter 
reached us — of an atrocious mutiny having broken out on 
board the Bussell, and that the mutineers had remained in 
possession of the ship, which had gone off, it was supposed, 
to be a pirate ; and that Captain Eeid was sent adrift in a 
boat with some men — officers or something — whose names 
were all given, for they were picked up by a West Indian 
steamer. Oh, Margaret ! how your father and I turned sick 
over that list, when there was no name of Frederick Hale. 
We thought it must be some mistake: for poor Fred was 
such a fine fellow, only perhaps rather too passionate ; and 
we hoped that the name of Carr, which was in the list, was 
a misprint for that of Hale — newspapers are so careless. 
And, towards post-time the next day, papa set off to walk to 
Southampton to get the papers ; and I could not stop at 
home, so I went to meet him. He was very late — much 
later than I thought he would have been ; and I sat down 

125 


North and South 

under the hedge to wait for him. He came at last, his arms 
hanging loose down, his head sunk, and walking heavily 
along, as if every step was a labour and a trouble. Margaret, 
I see him now.” 

“ Don’t go on, mamma. I can understand it all,” said 
Margaret, leaning up caressingly against her mother’s side, 
and kissing her hand. 

“No, you can’t, Margaret. No one can who did not see 
him then. I could hardly lift myself up to go and meet him 
• — everything seemed so to reel around me all at once. And 
when I got to him, he did not speak, or seem surprised to 
see me there, more than three miles from home, beside the 
Oldham beech-tree ; but he put my arm in his, and kept 
stroking my hand, as if he wanted to soothe me to be very 
quiet under some great heavy blow ; and, when I trembled so 
all over that I could not speak, he took me in his arms, and 
stooped down his head on mine, and began to shake and to 
cry in a strange muffled, groaning voice, till I, for very 
fright, stood quite still, and only begged him to tell me what 
he had heard. And then, with his hand jerking, as if some 
one else moved it against his will, he gave me a wicked 
newspaper to read, calling our Frederick a ‘traitor of the 
blackest dye,’ ‘ a base, ungrateful disgrace to his profession.’ 
Oh ! I cannot tell what bad words they did not use. I took 
the paper in my hands as soon as I had read it — I tore it up 
to little bits — I tore it — oh ! I believe, Margaret, I tore it 
with my teeth. I did not cry. I could not. My cheeks 
were as hot as fire, and my very eyes burned in my head. 
I saw your father looking grave at me. I said it was 
a lie, and so it was. Months after, this letter came, 
and you see what provocation Frederick had. It was 
not for himself, or his own injuries, he rebelled; but he 
would speak his mind to Captain Eeid, and so it went 
on from bad to worse; and you see, most of the sailors 
stuck by Frederick. 

“ I think, Margaret,” she continued, after a pause, in a 
weak, trembling, exhausted voice, “ I am glad of it — I am 

126 


The Mutiny 

prouder of Frederick standing up against injustice, than if 
he had been simply a good officer.” 

“ I am sure I am,” said Margaret, in a firm, decided tone. 
“ Loyalty and obedience to wisdom and justice are fine ; but 
it is still finer to defy arbitrary power, unjustly and cruelly 
used — not on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of others 
more helpless.” 

“ For all that, I wish I could see Frederick once more — 
just once. He was my first baby, Margaret.” Mrs. Hale 
spoke wistfully, and almost as if apologising for the yearning, 
craving wish, as though it were a depreciation of her remain- 
ing child. But such an idea never crossed Margaret’s mind. 
She was thinking how her mother’s desire could be fulfilled. 

“ It is six or seven years ago — would they still prosecute 
him, mother? If he came and stood his trial, what would 
be the punishment ? Surely, he might bring evidence of his 
great provocation.” 

“It would do no good,” replied Mrs. Hale. “Some of 
the sailors who accompanied Frederick were taken, and there 
was a court-martial held on them on board th eAmicia; I 
believed all they said in their defence, poor fellows, because 
it just agreed with Frederick’s story — but it was of no use ” ; 
— and for the first time during the conversation Mrs. Hale 
began to cry ; yet something possessed Margaret to force the 
information she foresaw, yet dreaded, from her mother. 

“ What happened to them, mamma ? ” asked she. 

“ They were hung at the yard-arm,” said Mrs. Hale 
solemnly. “And the worst was that the court, in con- 
demning them to death, said they had suffered themselves to 
be led astray from their duty by their superior officers.” 

They were silent for a long time. 

“ And Frederick was in South America for several years, 
was he not ? ” 

“ Yes. And now he is in Spain. At Cadiz, or somewhere 
near it. If he comes to England he will be hung. I shall 
never see his face again — for if he comes to England he will 
be hung.” 


127 


North and South 

There was no comfort to be given. Mrs. Hale turned her 
face to the wall, and lay perfectly still in her mother’s 
despair. Nothing could be said to console her. She took 
her hand out of Margaret’s with a little impatient movement, 
as if she would fain be left alone with the recollection of her 
son. When Mr. Hale came in, Margaret went out, oppressed 
with gloom, and seeing no promise of brightness on any side 
of the horizon. 


CHAPTER XV 

MASTERS AND MEN 

“ Thought fights with thought ; out springs a spark of truth 
From the collision of the sword and shield.” 

W. S. Landor. 

“ Margaret,” said her father, the next day, “ we must 
return Mrs. Thornton’s call. Your mother is not very well, 
and thinks she cannot walk so far ; but you and I will go 
this afternoon.” 

As they went, Mr. Hale began about his wife’s health, 
with a kind of veiled anxiety, which Margaret was glad to 
see awakened at last. 

“ Did you consult the doctor, Margaret ? Did you send 
for him ? ” 

“No, papa, you spoke of his coming to see me. Now I 
was well. But if I only knew of some good doctor, I would 
go this afternoon, and ask him to come, for I am sure mamma 
is seriously indisposed.” 

She put the truth thus plainly and strongly because her 
father had so completely shut his mind against the idea, 
when she had last named her fears. But now the case was 
changed. He answered in a despondent tone — 

“ Do you think she has any hidden complaint ? Do you 
128 


Masters and Men 

think she is really very ill ? Has Dixon said anything ? 
Oh, Margaret ! I am haunted by the fear that our coming 
to Milton has killed her. My poor Maria ! ” 

“ Oh, papa ! don’t imagine such things,” said Margaret, 
shocked. “ She is not well, that is all. Many a one is not 
well for a time ; and with good advice gets better and stronger 
than ever.” 

“ But has Dixon said anything about her ? ” 

“ No ! You know Dixon enjoys making a mystery out of 
trifles ; and she has been a little mysterious about mamma’s 
health, which has alarmed me rather, that is all. Without 
any reason, I dare say. You know, papa, you said the other 
day I was getting fanciful.” 

“ I hope and trust you are. But don’t think of what I 
said then. I like you to be fanciful about your mother’s 
health. Don’t be afraid of telling me your fancies. I like to 
hear them, though I dare say I spoke as if I was annoyed. 
But we will ask Mrs. Thornton if she can tell us of a good 
doctor. We won’t throw away our money on any but some 
one first-rate. Stay, we turn up this street.” 

The street did not look as if it could contain any 
house large enough for Mrs. Thornton’s habitation. Her 
son’s presence never gave any impression as to the kind 
of house he lived in ; but, unconsciously, Margaret had 
imagined that the tall, massive, handsomely dressed Mrs. 
Thornton must live in a house of the same character as 
herself. Now Marlborough Street consisted of long rows 
of small houses, with a blank wall here and there ; at least 
that was all they could see from the point at which they 
entered it. 

“ He told me he lived in Marlborough Street, I’m sure,” 
said Mr. Hale, with a much perplexed air. 

“ Perhaps it is one of the economies he still practises, to 
live in a very small house. But here are plenty of people 
about ; let me ask.” 

She accordingly inquired of a passer-by, and was informed 
that Mr. Thornton lived close to the mill, and had the factory 

I2Q K 


North and South 

lodge-door pointed out to. her, at the end of the long dead 
wall they had noticed. 

The lodge-door was like a common garden-door ; on one 
side of it were great closed gates for the ingress and egress 
of lurries and waggons. The lodge-keeper admitted them 
into a great oblong yard, on one side of which were offices 
for the transaction of business ; on the opposite, an immense 
many- windowed mill, whence proceeded the continual clank 
of machinery and the long groaning roar of the steam-engine, 
enough to deafen those who lived within the enclosure. Op- 
posite to the wall, along which the street ran, on one of the 
narrow sides of the oblong, was a handsome stone-coped 
house — blackened, to be sure, by the smoke, but with paint, 
windows, and steps kept scrupulously clean. It was evi- 
dently a house which had been built some fifty or sixty years. 
The stone facings — the long, narrow windows and the 
number of them — the flights of steps up to the front door, 
ascending from either side, and guarded by railing — all wit- 
nessed to its age. Margaret only wondered why people who 
could afford to live in so good a house, and keep it in such 
perfect order, did not prefer a much smaller dwelling in the 
country, or even in some suburb ; not in the continual whirl 
and din of the factory. Her unaccustomed ears could hardly 
catch her father’s voice, as they stood on the steps awaiting 
the opening of the door. The yard, too, with the great doors 
in the dead wall as a boundary, was but a dismal look-out 
for the sitting-rooms of the house — as Margaret found when 
they had mounted the old-fashioned stairs, and been ushered 
into the drawing-room, the three windows of which went over 
the front door and the room on the right-hand side of the 
entrance. There was no one in the drawing-room. It 
seemed as though no one had been in it since the day when 
the furniture was bagged up with as much care as if the 
house was to be overwhelmed with lava, and discovered a 
thousand years hence. The walls were pink and gold ; the 
pattern on the carpet represented bunches of flowers on a 
light ground, but it was carefully covered up in the centre 

130 


Masters and Men 

by a linen drugget, glazed and colourless. The window- 
curtains were lace; each chair and sofa had its own par- 
ticular veil of netting or knitting. Great alabaster groups 
occupied every flat surface, safe from dust under their glass 
shades. In the middle of the room, right under the bagged- 
up chandelier, was a large circular table, w T ith smartly-bound 
books arranged at regular intervals round the circumference 
of its polished surface, like gaily coloured spokes of a wheel. 
Everything reflected light, nothing absorbed it. The whole 
room had a painfully spotted, spangled, speckled look about 
it, which impressed Margaret so unpleasantly that she was 
hardly conscious of the peculiar cleanliness required to keep 
everything so white and pure in such an atmosphere, or of 
the trouble that must be willingly expended to secure that 
effect of icy, snowy discomfort. Wherever she looked there 
was evidence of care and labour, but not care and labour to 
procure ease, to help on habits of tranquil home employment ; 
solely to ornament, and then to preserve ornament from dirt 
or destruction. 

They had leisure to observe, and to speak to each other in 
low voices before Mrs. Thornton appeared. They were talk- 
ing of what all the world might hear ; but it is a common 
effect of such a room as this to make people speak low, as if 
unwilling to awaken the unused echoes. 

At last Mrs. Thornton came in, rustling in handsome 
black silk, as was her wont ; her muslins and laces rivalling, 
not excelling, the pure whiteness of the muslins and netting 
of the room. Margaret explained how it was that her 
mother could not accompany them to return Mrs. Thornton’s 
call ; but in her anxiety not to bring back her father’s fears 
too vividly, she gave but a bungling account, and left the 
impression on Mrs. Thornton’s mind that Mrs. Hale’s was 
some temporary or fanciful fine-ladyish indisposition, which 
might have been put aside had there been a strong enough 
motive ; or that, if it was too severe to allow her to come out 
that day, the call might have been deferred. Eemembering, 
too, the horses to her carriage, hired for her own visit to the 

131 


North and South 

Hales, and how Fanny had been ordered to go by Mr. 
Thornton, in order to pay every respect to them, Mrs. Thorn- 
ton drew up slightly offended, and gave Margaret no sym- 
pathy — indeed, hardly any credit for the statement of her 
mother’s indisposition. 

“ How is Mr. Thornton ? ” asked Mr. Hale. “ I was 
afraid he was not well, from his hurried note yesterday.” 

“ My son is rarely ill ; and when he is, he never speaks 
about it, or makes it an excuse for not doing anything. He 
told me he could not get leisure to read with you last night, 
sir. He regretted it, I am sure ; he values the hours spent 
with you.” 

“ I am sure they are equally agreeable to me,” said Mr. 
Hale. “ It makes me feel young again to see his enjoyment 
and appreciation of all that is fine in classical literature.” 

“I have no doubt that classics are very desirable for 
people who have leisure. But, I confess, it was against my 
judgment that my son renewed his study of them. The 
time and place in which he lives, seem to me to require all 
his energy and attention. Classics may do very well for men 
who loiter away their fives in the country or in colleges ; 
but Milton men ought to have their thoughts and powers 
absorbed in the work of to-day. At least, that is my 
opinion.” This last clause she gave out with “ the pride 
that apes humility.” 

“ But, surely, if the mind is too long directed to one 
object only, it will get stiff and rigid, and unable to take in 
many interests,” said Margaret. 

“ I do not quite understand what you mean by a mind 
getting stiff and rigid. Nor do I admire those whirligig 
characters that are full of this thing to-day, to be utterly 
forgetful of it in their new interest to-morrow. Having 
many interests does not suit the fife of a Milton manufac- 
turer. It is, or ought to be, enough for him to have one 
great desire, and to bring all the purposes of his fife to bear 
on the fulfilment of that.” 

“ And that is ? ” asked Mr. Hale. 

i3 2 


Masters and Men 

Her sallow cheek flushed, and her eye lightened, as she 
answered — 

“ To hold and maintain a high, honourable place among 
the merchants of his country — the men of his town. Such a 
place my son has earned for himself. Go where you will — I 
don’t say in England only, but in Europe — the name of John 
Thornton of Milton is known and respected amongst all men 
of business. Of course, it is unknown in the fashionable 
circles,” she continued scornfully. “ Idle gentlemen and 
ladies are not likely to know much of a Milton manu- 
facturer, unless he gets into Parliament, or marries a lord’s 
daughter.” 

Both Mr. Hale and Margaret had an uneasy, ludicrous 
consciousness that they had never heard of this great name, 
until Mr. Bell had written them word that Mr. Thornton 
would be a good friend to have in Milton. The proud 
mother’s world was not their world of Harley Street gen- 
tilities on the one hand, or country clergymen and Hamp- 
shire squires on the other. Margaret’s face, in spite of all 
her endeavours to keep it simply listening in its expression, 
told the sensitive Mrs. Thornton this feeling of hers. 

“You think you never heard of this wonderful son of 
mine, Miss Hale. You think I’m an old woman whose 
ideas are bounded by Milton, and whose own crow is the 
whitest ever seen.” 

“No,” said Margaret, with some spirit. “ It may be true 
that I was thinking I had hardly heard Mr. Thornton’s name 
before I came to Milton. But since I have come here, I 
have heard enough to make me respect and admire him, and 
to feel how much justice and truth there is in what you have 
said of him.” 

“ Who spoke to you of him ? ” asked Mrs. Thornton, a 
little mollified, yet jealous lest any one else’s words should 
not have done him full justice. 

Margaret hesitated before she replied. She did not like 
this authoritative questioning. Mr. Hale came in, as he 
thought, to the rescue. 


133 


North and South 

“ It was what Mr. Thornton said himself, that made us 
know the kind of man he was. Was it not, Margaret ? ” 

Mrs. Thornton drew herself up, and said — 

“ My son is not the one to tell of his own doings. May 
I again ask you, Miss Hale, from whose account you formed 
your favourable opinion of him ? A mother is curious and 
greedy of commendation of her children, you know.” 

Margaret replied, “ It was as much from what Mr. 
Thornton withheld of that which we had been told of his 
previous life by Mr. Bell — it was more that than what he 
said, that made us all feel what reason you have to be proud 
of him.” 

“ Mr. Bell ! What can he know of John ? He, living a 
lazy life in a drowsy college ! But I’m obliged to you, Miss 
Hale. Many a missy young lady would have shrunk from 
giving an old woman the pleasure of hearing that her son 
was well spoken of.” 

“ Why ? ” asked Margaret, looking straight at Mrs. 
Thornton, in bewilderment. 

“ Why ! because I suppose they might have consciences 
that told them how surely they were making the old mother 
into an advocate for them, in case they had any plans on the 
son’s heart.” 

She smiled a grim smile, for she had been pleased by 
Margaret’s frankness ; and perhaps she felt that she had been 
asking questions too much as if she had a right to catechise. 
Margaret laughed outright at the notion presented to her ; 
laughed so merrily that it grated on Mrs. Thornton’s ear, as if 
the words that called forth that laugh, must have been utterly 
and entirely ludicrous. 

Margaret stopped her merriment as soon as she saw Mrs. 
Thornton’s annoyed look. 

“ I beg your pardon, madam. But I really am very much 
obliged to you for exonerating me from making any plans On 
Mr. Thornton’s heart.” 

“Young ladies have, before now,” said Mrs. Thornton 
stiffly. 


i34 


Masters and Men 

“ I hope Miss Thornton is well,” put in Mr. Hale, desirous 
of changing the current of the conversation. 

“ She is as well as she ever is. She is not strong,” replied 
Mrs. Thornton shortly. 

“ And Mr. Thornton ? I suppose I may hope to see him 
on Thursday ? ” 

“ I cannot answer for my son’s engagements. There is 
some uncomfortable work going on in the town ; a threatening 
of a strike. If so, his experience and judgment will make 
him much consulted by his friends. But I should think he 
could come on Thursday. At any rate, I am sure he will let 
you know if he cannot.” 

“ A strike ! ” asked Margaret. “ What for ! What are 
they going to strike for ? ” 

“ For the mastership and ownership of other people’s 
property,” said Mrs. Thornton, with a fierce snort. “ That 
is what they always strike for. If my son’s workpeople 
strike, I will only say they are a pack of ungrateful hounds. 
But I have no doubt they will.” 

“ They are wanting higher wages, I suppose ? ” asked 
Mr. Hale. 

“ That is the face of the thing. But the truth is, they 
want to be masters, and make the masters into slaves on 
their own ground. They are always trying at it ; they 
always have it in their minds ; and every five or six years 
there comes a struggle between masters and men. They’ll 
find themselves mistaken this time, I fancy — a little out of 
their reckoning. If they turn out, they mayn’t find it so 
easy to go in again. I believe the masters have a thing or 
two in their heads which will teach the men not to strike 
again in a hurry, if they try it this time.” 

“ Does it not make the town very rough ? ” asked 
Margaret. 

“ Of course it does. But surely you are not a coward, 
are you ? Milton is not the place for cowards. I have known 
the time when I have had to thread my way through a 
crowd of white, angry men, all swearing they would have 

135 


North and South 

Mackinson’s blood as soon as he ventured to show his nose 
out of his factory ; and, he knowing nothing of it, some one 
had to go and tell him, or he was a dead man ; and it needed 
to be a woman — so I went. And when I had got in, I could 
not get out. It was as much as my life was worth. So I 
went up to the roof, where there were stones piled ready to 
drop on the heads of the crowd, if they tried to force the 
factory doors. And I would have lifted those heavy stones, 
and dropped them with as good an aim as the best man 
there, but that I fainted with the heat I had gone through. 
If you live in Milton, you must learn to have a brave heart, 
Miss Hale.” 

“ I would do my best,” said Margaret, rather pale. “ I 
do not know whether I am brave or not till I am tried ; but 
I am afraid I should be a coward.” 

“ South country people are often frightened by what our 
Darkshire men and women only call living and struggling. 
But when you’ve been ten years among a people who are 
always owing their betters a grudge, and only waiting for an 
opportunity to pay it off, you’ll know whether you are a 
coward or not, take my word for it.” 

Mr. Thornton came that evening to Mr. Hale’s. He was 
shown up into the drawing-room, where Mr. Hale was 
reading aloud to his wife and daughter. 

“ I am come partly to bring you a note from my mother, 
and partly to apologise for not keeping to my time yester- 
day. The note contains the address you asked for: Dr. 
Donaldson.” 

“ Thank you ! ” said Margaret hastily, holding out her 
hand to take the note, for she did not wish her mother to 
hear that they had been making any inquiry about a doctor. 
She was pleased that Mr. Thornton seemed immediately to 
understand her feeling ; he gave her the note without another 
word of explanation. 

Mr. Hale began to talk about the strike. Mr. Thornton’s 
face assumed a likeness to his mother’s worst expression, 
which immediately repelled the watching Margaret. 

136 


Masters and Men 

“ Yes ; the fools will have a strike. Let them. It suits 
us well enough. But we gave them a chance. They think 
trade is flourishing as it was last year. We see the storm on 
the horizon and draw in our sails. But, because we don’t 
explain our reasons, they won’t believe we’re acting reason- 
ably. We must give them line and letter for the way we 
choose to spend or*- save our money. Henderson tried a 
dodge with his men, out at Ashley, and failed. He rather 
wanted a strike ; it would have suited his book well enough. 
So, when the men came to ask for the five per cent, they are 
claiming, he told ’em he’d think about it, and give them his 
answer on the pay day; knowing all the while what his 
answer would be, of course, but thinking he’d strengthen 
their conceit of their own way. However, they were too 
deep for him, and heard something about the bad prospects 
of trade. So in they came on the Friday, and drew back 
their claim, and now he’s obliged to go on working. But we 
Milton masters have to-day sent in our decision. We won’t 
advance a penny. We tell them we may have to lower 
wages ; but can’t afford to raise. So here we stand, waiting 
for their next attack.” 

“ And what will that be ? ” asked Mr. Hale. 

“ I conjecture, a simultaneous strike. You will see Milton 
without smoke in a few days, I imagine, Miss Hale.” 

“ But why,” asked she, “ could you not explain what good 
reason you had for expecting a bad trade ? I don’t know 
whether I use the right words, but you will understand what 
I mean.” 

“ Do you give your servants reasons for your expendi- 
ture, or your economy in the use of your own money ? We, 
the owners of capital, have a right to choose what we will 
do with it.” 

“ A human right,” said Margaret, very low. 

“ I beg you pardon, I did not hear what you said.” 

“ I would rather not repeat it,” said she ; “ it related to 
a feeling which I do not think you would share.” 

“ Won’t you try me ? ” pleaded he, his thoughts suddenly 
137 


North and South 

bent upon learning what she had said. She was displeased 
with his pertinacity, but did not choose to affix too much 
importance to her words. 

“I said you had a human right. I meant that there 
seemed no reason but religious ones, why you should not do 
what you like with your own.” 

“ I know we differ in our religious^ opinions ; but don’t 
you give me credit for having some, though not the same as 
yours ? ” 

He was speaking in a subdued voice, as if to her alone. 
She did not wish to be so exclusively addressed. She replied 
out in her usual tone — 

“ I do not think that I have any occasion to consider your 
special religious opinions in the affair. All I meant to say is, 
that there is no human law to prevent the employers from 
utterly wasting or throwing away all their money, if they 
choose; but that there are passages in the Bible which 
would rather imply — to me at least — that they neglected their 
duty as stewards if they did so. However, I know so little 
about strikes, and rate of wages, and capital and labour, 
that I had better not talk to a political economist like you.” 

“Nay, the more reason,” said he eagerly. “ I shall only 
be too glad to explain to you all that may seem anomalous 
or mysterious to a stranger ; especially at a time like this> 
when our doings are sure to be canvassed by every scribbler 
who can hold a pen.” 

“ Thank you,” she answered coldly. “ Of course, I shall 
apply to my father in the first instance for any information 
he can give me, if I get puzzled with living here amongst 
this strange society.” 

“You think it strange. Why ? ” 

“ I don’t know — I suppose because, on the very face of 
it, I see two classes dependent on each other in every 
possible way, yet each evidently regarding the interests of 
the other as opposed to their own ; I never lived in a place 
before where there were two sets of people always running 
each other down.” 


Masters and Men 

“ Who have you heard running the masters down ? I 
don’t ask who you have heard abusing the men ; for I see 
you persist in misunderstanding what I said the other day. 
But who have you heard abusing the masters ? ” 

Margaret reddened ; then smiled as she said — • 

“ I am not fond of being catechised. I refuse to answer 
your question. Besides, it has nothing to do with the fact. 
You must take my word for it, that I have heard some 
people, or, it may be, only some one of the workpeople speak 
as though it were the interest of the employers to keep them 
from acquiring money — that it would make them too indepen- 
dent if they had a sum in the savings’ bank.” 

“ I dare say it was that man Higgins who told you all 
this,” said Mrs. Hale. Mr. Thornton did not appear to hear 
what Margaret evidently did not wish him to know. But he 
caught it, nevertheless. 

“ I heard, moreover, that it was considered to the advan- 
tage of the masters to have ignorant workmen — not hedge- 
lawyers, as Captain Lennox used to call those men in his 
company who questioned and would know the reason for 
every order.” 

This latter part of her sentence she addressed rather to 
her father than to Mr. Thornton. Who is Captain Lennox ? 
asked Mr. Thornton of himself, with a strange kind of dis- 
pleasure that prevented him for the moment from replying 
to her. Her father took up the conversation. 

“You never were fond of schools, Margaret; or you 
would have seen and known before this, how much is being 
done for education in Milton.” 

“ No ! ” said she, with sudden meekness. “ I know I do 
not care enough about schools. But the knowledge and the 
ignorance of which I was speaking did not relate to reading 
and writing — the teaching or information one can give to a 
child. I am sure, that what was meant was ignorance of the 
wisdom that shall guide men and women. I hardly know 
what that is. But he — that is, my informant — spoke as if 
the masters would like their hands to be merely tall, large 

i39 


North and South 

children — living in the present moment — with a blind un- 
reasoning kind of obedience.” 

“ In short, Miss Hale, it is very evident that your in- 
formant found a pretty ready listener to all the slander he 
chose to utter against the masters,” said Mr. Thornton, in 
an offended tone. 

Margaret did not reply. She was displeased at the per- 
sonal character Mr. Thornton affixed to what she had said. 

Mr. Hale spoke next — 

“ I must confess that, although I have not become so 
intimately acquainted with any workmen as Margaret has, 
I am very much struck by the antagonism between the em- 
ployer and the employed, on the very surface of things. I 
even gather this impression from what you yourself have 
from time to time said.” 

Mr. Thornton paused awhile before he spoke. Margaret 
had just left the room, and he was vexed at the state of feel- 
ing between himself and her. However, the little annoyance, 
by making him cooler and more thoughtful, gave a greater 
dignity to what he said — 

“ My theory is, that my interests are identical with those 
of my workpeople, and vice-versa. Miss Hale, I know, does 
not like to hear men called ‘ hands so I won’t use that 
word, though it comes most readily to my lips as the 
technical term, whose origin, whatever it was, dates from 
before my time. On some future day — in some millennium 
— in Utopia, this unity may be brought into practice — just as 
I can fancy a republic the most perfect form of government.” 

“We will read Plato’s Republic as soon as we have 
finished Homer.” 

“ Well, in the Platonic year, it may fall out that we are 
all — men, women, and children — fit for a republic ; but give 
me a constitutional monarchy in our present state of morals 
and intelligence. In our infancy we require a wise despotism 
to govern us. Indeed, long past infancy, children and young 
people are the happiest under the unfailing laws of a discreet, 
firm authority. I agree with Miss Hale so far as to consider 

140 


Masters and Men 

our people in the condition of children, while I deny that we, 
the masters, have anything to do with the making or keep- 
ing them so. I maintain that despotism is the best kind of 
government for them ; so that in the hours in which I come 
in contact with them I must necessarily be an autocrat. I 
will use my best discretion — from no humbug or philan- 
thropic feeling, of which we have had rather too much in the 
North — to make wise laws and come to just decisions in the 
conduct of my business — laws and decisions which work for 
my own good in the first instance — for theirs in the second ; 
but I will neither be forced to give my reasons, nor flinch 
from what I have once declared to be my resolution. Let 
them turn out ! I shall suffer as well as they : but at the 
end they will find I have not bated nor altered one jot.” 

Margaret had re-entered the room and was sitting at her 
work ; but she did not speak. Mr. Hale answered — 

“ I dare say I am talking in great ignorance ; but, from 
the little I know, I should say that the masses were already 
passing rapidly into the troublesome stage which intervenes 
between childhood and manhood, in the life of the multitude 
as well as that of the individual. Now the error which 
many parents commit in the treatment of the individual at 
this time is, insisting on the same unreasoning obedience as 
when all he had to do in the way of duty was to obey the 
simple laws of ‘ Come when you’re called,’ and ‘ Do as you’re 
bid ! * But a wise parent humours the desire for independent 
action, so as to become the friend and adviser when his 
absolute rule shall cease. If I get wrong in my reasoning, 
recollect, it is you who adopted the analogy.” 

“ Very lately,” said Margaret, “ I heard a story of what 
happened in Nuremberg only three or four years ago. A 
rich man there lived alone in one of the immense mansions 
which were formerly both dwellings and warehouses. It was 
reported that he had a child, but no one knew of it for certain. 
For forty years this rumour kept rising and falling — never 
utterly dying away. After his death it was found to be true. 
He had a son — an overgrown man, with the unexercised 

141 


North and South 

intellect of a child, whom he had kept up in that strange 
way, in order to save him from temptation and error. But, 
of course, when this great old child was turned loose into the 
world, every bad counsellor had power over him. He did 
not know good from evil. His father had made the blunder 
of bringing him up in ignorance and taking it for innocence ; 
and, after fourteen months of riotous living, the city authori- 
ties had to take charge of him, in order to save him from 
starvation. He could not even use words effectively enough 
to be a successful beggar.” 

“ I used the comparison (suggested by Miss Hale) of the 
position of the master to that of a parent ; so I ought not to 
complain of your turning the simile into a weapon against 
me. But, Mr. Hale, when you were setting up a wise parent 
as a model for us, you said he humoured his children in 
their desire for independent action. Now certainly, the time 
is not come for the hands to have any independent action 
during business hours ; I hardly know what you would mean 
by it, then. And I say, that the masters would be trenching 
on the independence of their hands, in a way that I, for one, 
should not feel justified in doing, if we interfered too much 
with the life they lead out of the mills. Because they labour 
ten hours a day for us, I do not see that we have any right 
to impose leading-strings upon them for the rest of their 
time. I value my own independence so highly that I. can 
fancy no degradation greater than that of having another 
man perpetually directing and advising and lecturing me, or 
even planning too closely in any way about my actions. He 
might be the wisest of men or the most powerful — I should 
equally rebel and resent his interference. I imagine this is 
a stronger feeling in the North of England than in the South.” 

“ I beg your pardon, but is not that because there has 
been none of the equality of friendship between the adviser 
and advised classes ? Because every man has had to stand 
in an unchristian and isolated position, apart from and 
jealous of his brother-man : constantly afraid of his rights 
being trenched upon ? ” 


142 


Masters and Men 

“ I only state the fact. I am sorry to say, I have an 
appointment at eight o’clock, and I must just take facts as 
I find them to-night, without trying to account for them ; 
which, indeed, would make no difference in determining how 
to act as things stand — the facts must be granted.” 

“ But,” said Margaret, in a low voice, “ it seems to me 

that it makes all the difference in the world ” Her 

father made a sign to her to be silent, and allow Mr. 
Thornton to finish what he had to say. He was already 
standing up and preparing to go. 

“ You must grant me this one point. Given a strong 
feeling of independence in every Darkshire man, have I 
any right to obtrude my views of the 1 manner in which he 
shall act, upon another (hating it as I should do most 
vehemently myself), merely because he has labour to sell 
and I capital to buy ? ” 

“ Not in the least,” said Margaret, determined just to 
say this one thing ; “ not in the least because of your labour 
and capital positions, whatever they are, but because you 
are a man, dealing with a set of men over whom you have, 
whether you reject the use of it or not, immense power, 
just because your lives and your welfare are so constantly 
and intimately interwoven. God has made us so that we 
must be mutually dependent. We may ignore our own 
dependence, or refuse to acknowledge that others depend 
upon us in more respects than the payment of weekly 
wages; but the thing must be, nevertheless. Neither you 
nor any other master can help yourselves. The most proudly 
independent man depends on those around him for their 
insensible influence on his character — his life. And the 
most isolated of all your Darkshire Egos has dependants 
clinging to him on all sides ; he cannot shake them off, 
any more than the great rock he resembles can shake 
off” 

“ Pray don’t go into similes, Margaret ; you have led 
us off once already,” said her father, smiling, yet uneasy 
at the thought that they were detaining Mr. Thornton 

M3 


North and South 

against his will; which was a mistake, for he rather liked 
it, as long as Margaret would talk, although what she said 
only irritated him. 

“ Just tell me, Miss Hale, are you yourself ever influenced 
— no, that is not a fair way of putting it ; — but, if you are 
ever conscious of being influenced by others, and not by 
circumstances, have those others been working directly or 
indirectly? Have they been labouring to exhort, to enjoin, 
to act rightly for the sake of example, or have they been 
simple, true men, taking up their duty, and doing it un- 
flinchingly, without a thought of how their actions were 
to make this man industrious, that man saving? Why, if 
I were a workman, I should be twenty times more impressed 
by the knowledge that my master was honest, punctual, 
quick, resolute in all his doings (and hands are keener spies 
even than valets), than by any amount of interference, how- 
ever kindly meant, with my ways of going on out of work- 
hours. I do not choose to think too closely on what I am 
myself ; but, I believe, I rely on the straightforward honesty 
of my hands, and the open nature of their opposition, in 
contradistinction to the way in which the turn-out will be 
managed in some mills, just because they know I scorn 
to take a single dishonourable advantage, or do an under- 
hand thing myself. It goes farther than a whole course 
of lectures on ‘ Honesty is the Best Policy * — life diluted 
into words. No, no! What the master is, that will the 
men be, without overmuch taking thought on his part.” 

“That is a great admission,” said Margaret, laughing. 
“ When I see men violent and obstinate in pursuit of their 
rights, I may safely infer that the master is the same ; that 
he is a little ignorant of that spirit which suffereth long, 
and is kind, and seeketh not her own.” 

“ You are just like all strangers who don’t understand 
the working of our system, Miss Hale,” said he hastily. 
“ You suppose that our men are puppets of dough, ready 
to be moulded into any amiable form we please. You 
forget we have only to do with them for less than a third of 

144 


Masters and Men 

their lives ; and you seem not to perceive that the duties 
of a manufacturer are far larger and wider than those merely 
of an employer of labour; we have a wide commercial 
character to maintain, which makes us into the great 
pioneers of civilisation.” 

“ It strikes me,” said Mr. Hale, smiling, “ that you might 
pioneer a little at home. They are a rough, heathenish set 
of fellows, these Milton men of yours.” 

“ They are that,” replied Mr. Thornton. “ Rose water 
surgery won’t do for them. Cromwell would have made 
a capital mill-owner, Miss Hale. I wish we had him to 
put down this strike for us.” 

“ Cromwell is no hero of mine,” said she coldly. “ But 
I am trying to reconcile your admiration of despotism with 
your respect for other men’s independence of character.” 

He reddened at her tone. “ I choose to be the un- 
questioned and irresponsible master of my hands, during 
the hours that they labour for me. But those hours past, 
our relation ceases; and then comes in the same respect 
for their independence that I myself exact.” 

He did not speak again for a minute, he was too much 
vexed. But he shook it off, and bade Mr. and Mrs. Hale 
good-night. Then, drawing near to Margaret, he said in 
a lower voice — 

“ I spoke hastily to you once this evening, and, I am 
afraid, rather rudely. But you know I am but an uncouth 
Milton manufacturer ; will you forgive me ? ” 

“ Certainly,” said she, smiling up in his face, the ex- 
pression of which was somewhat anxious and oppressed, 
and hardly cleared away as he met her sweet, sunny coun- 
tenance, out of which all the north-wind effect of their 
discussion had entirely vanished. But she did not put out 
her hand to him, and again he felt the omission, and set 
it down to pride. 


h 


145 


North and South 


CHAPTEB XVI 

THE SHADOW OF DEATH 

“ Trust in that veiled hand, which leads 
None by the path that he would go ; 

And always be for change prepared, 

For the world’s law is ebb and flow.” 

From the Arabic. 

The next afternoon Dr. Donaldson came to pay his first 
visit to Mrs. Hale. The mystery that Margaret hoped their 
late habits of intimacy had broken through was resumed. 
She was excluded from the room, while Dixon was admitted. 
Margaret was not a ready lover ; but where she loved she 
loved passionately, and with no small degree of jealousy. 

She went into her mother’s bedroom, just behind the 
drawing-room, and paced it up and down, while awaiting 
the doctor’s coming out. Every now and then she stopped 
to listen ; she fancied she heard a moan. She clenched her 
hands tight, and held her breath. She was sure she heard 
a moan. Then all was still for a few minutes more ; and 
then there was the moving of chairs, the raised voices, all 
the little disturbances of leave-taking. 

When she heard the door open, she went quickly out 
of the bedroom. 

“ My father is from home, Dr. Donaldson ; he has to 
attend a pupil at this hour. May I trouble you to come 
into his room downstairs ? ” 

She saw, and triumphed over all the obstacles which 
Dixon threw in her way; assuming her rightful position 
as daughter of the house in something of the spirit of the 
Elder Brother, which quelled the old servant’s officiousness 
very effectually. Margaret’s conscious assumption of this 
unusual dignity of demeanour towards Dixon gave her an 
instant’s amusement in the midst of her anxiety. She 

146 


The Shadow of Death 

knew, from the surprised expression on Dixon’s face, how 
ridiculously grand she herself must be looking; and the 
idea carried her downstairs into the room ; it gave her that 
length of oblivion from the keen sharpness of the recollection 
of the actual business in hand. Now, that came back, and 
seemed to take away her breath. It was a moment or two 
before she could utter a word. 

But she spoke with an air of command, as she asked — 

“ What is the matter with mamma ? You will oblige 
me by telling the simple truth.” Then, seeing a slight 
hesitation on the doctor’s part, she added — 

“ I am the only child she has — here, I mean. My father 
is not sufficiently alarmed, I fear; and, therefore, if there 
is any serious apprehension, it must be broken to him 

gently. I can do this. I can nurse my mother. Pray, 

speak, sir ; to see your face, and not be able to read it, 

gives me a worse dread than I trust any words of yours 

will justify.” 

“ My dear young lady, your mother seems to have a 
most attentive and efficient servant, who is more like her 
friend ” 

“lam her daughter, sir.” 

“ But when I tell you she expressly desired that you 
might not be told ” 

“ I am not good or patient enough to submit to the 
prohibition. Besides, I am sure, you are too wise — too 
experienced, to have promised to keep the secret.” 

“ Well,” said he, half -smiling, though sadly enough, 
“there you are right. I did not promise. In fact, I 
fear, the secret will be known soon enough without my 
revealing it.” 

He paused. Margaret went very white, and compressed 
her lips a little more. Otherwise not a feature moved. 
With the quick insight into character, without which no 
medical man can rise to the eminence of Dr. Donaldson, 
he saw that she would exact the full truth ; that she would 
know if one iota was withheld; and that the withholding 

147 


North and South 

would be torture more acute than the knowledge of it. He 
spoke two short sentences in a low voice, watching her all 
the time ; for the pupils of her eyes dilated into a black 
horror, and the whiteness of her complexion became livid. 
He ceased speaking. He waited for that look to go off — 
for her gasping breath to come. Then she said — 

“ I thank you most truly, sir, for your confidence. That 
dread has haunted me for many weeks. It is a true, real 
agony. My poor, poor mother ! ” her lips began to quiver, 
and he let her have the relief of tears, sure of her power 
of self-control to check them. 

A few tears — those were all she shed, before she recollected 
the many questions she longed to ask. 

“ Will there be much suffering ? ” 

He shook his head. “ That we cannot tell. It depends 
on constitution; on a thousand things. But the late dis- 
coveries of medical science have given us large power of 
alleviation.” 

“ My father ! ” said Margaret, trembling all over. 

“ I do not know Mr. Hale. I mean, it is difficult to give 
advice. But I should say, bear on, with the knowledge you 
have forced me to give you so abruptly, till the fact which 
I could not withhold has become in some degree familiar to 
you ; so that you may, without too great an effort, be able 
to give what comfort you can to your father. Before then 
— my visits, which, of course, I shall repeat from time to 
time, although I fear I can do nothing but alleviate — a 
thousand little circumstances will have occurred to awaken 
his alarm, to deepen it — so that he will be all the better pre- 
pared. — Nay, my dear young lady — nay, my dear — I saw Mr. 
Thornton, and I honour your father for the sacrifice he has 
made, however mistaken I may believe him to be. — Well, this 
once, if it will please you, my dear. Only remember, when 
I come again, I come as a friend. And you must learn to 
look upon me as such, because seeing each other — getting to 
know each other at such times as these, is worth years of 
morning calls.” 


148 


The Shadow of Death 

Margaret could not speak for crying ; but she wrung his 
hand at parting. 

“ That’s what I call a fine girl ! ” thought Dr. Donaldson, 
when he was seated in his carriage, and had time to examine 
his ringed hand, which had slightly suffered from her pressure. 
“ Who would have thought that little hand could have given 
such a squeeze ? But the bones were well put together, and 
that gives immense power. What a queen she is ! With her 
head thrown back at first, to force me into speaking the truth ; 
and then bent so eagerly forward to listen. Poor thing ! 
I must see she does not overstrain herself. Though it’s 
astonishing how much those thorough-bred creatures can 
do and suffer. That girl’s game to the backbone. Another, 
who had gone that deadly colour, could never have come 
round without either fainting or hysterics. But she wouldn’t 
do either — not she ! And the very force of her will brought 
her round. Such a girl as that would win my heart, if I 
were thirty years younger. It’s too late now. Ah; here 
we are at the Archers’.” So out he jumped, with thought, 
wisdom, experience, sympathy, all ready to attend to the 
calls made upon them by this family, just as if there were 
none other in the world. 

Meanwhile, Margaret had returned into her father’s 
study for a moment, to recover strength before going 
upstairs into her mother’s presence. 

“ Oh, my God, my God ! but this is terrible. How shall 
I bear it ? Such a deadly disease ! no hope ! Oh, mamma, 
mamma, I wish I had never gone to Aunt Shaw’s, and been 
all those precious years away from you ! Poor mamma ! 
how much she must have borne! Oh, I pray Thee, my 
God, that her sufferings may not be too acute, too dreadful. 
How shall I bear to see them? How can I bear papa’s 
agony? He must not be told yet; not all at once. It 
would kill him. But I won’t lose another moment of my 
own dear, precious mother.” 

She ran upstairs. Dixon was not in the room. Mrs. 
Hale lay back in an easy chair, with a soft white shawl 

149 


North and South 

wrapped around her, and a becoming cap put on, in expecta- 
tion of the doctor’s visit. Her face had a little faint colour 
in it, and the very exhaustion after the examination gave 
it a peaceful look. Margaret was surprised to see her look 
so calm. 

“ Why, Margaret, how strange you look ! What is the 
matter?” And then, as the idea stole into her mind of 
what was indeed the real state of the case, she added, as 
if a little displeased : “ You have not been seeing Dr. 
Donaldson, and asking him any questions — have you, child ? ” 
Margaret did not reply — only looked wistfully towards her. 
Mrs. Hale became more displeased. “ He would not surely 
break his word to me, and ” 

“ Oh yes, mamma, he did. I made him. It was I — 
blame me.” She knelt down by her mother’s side, and 
caught her hand — she would not let it go, though Mrs. 
Hale tried to pull it away. She kept kissing it, and the 
hot tears she shed bathed it. 

“ Margaret, it was very wrong of you. You knew I did 
not wish you to know.” But, as if tired with the contest, 
she left her hand in Margaret’s clasp, and by-and-by she 
returned the pressure faintly. That encouraged Margaret 
to speak. 

“ Oh, mamma ! let me be your nurse. I will learn 
anything Dixon can teach me. But you know I am your 
child, and I do think I have a right to do everything for you.” 

“ You don’t know what you are asking,” said Mrs. Hale, 
with a shudder. 

“Yes, I do. I know a great deal more than you are 
aware of. Let me be your nurse. Let me try, at any rate. 
No one has ever, shall ever try so hard as I will do. It 
will be such a comfort, mamma.’* 

“ My poor child ! Well, you shall try. Do you know, 
Margaret, Dixon and I thought you would quite shrink from 
me if you knew ” 

“ Dixon thought ! ” said Margaret, her lips curling. 
“ Dixon could not give me credit for enough true love — for 

150 


The Shadow of Death 

as much as herself ! She thought, I suppose, that I was 
one of those poor sickly women who like to lie on rose 
leaves, and be fanned all day. Don’t let Dixon’s fancies 
come any more between you and me, mamma. Don’t, 
please ! ” implored she. 

“ Don’t be angry with Dixon,” said Mrs. Hale anxiously. 
Margaret recovered herself. 

“ No ! I won’t. I will try and be humble, and learn 
her ways, if you will only let me do all I can for you. Let 
me be in the first place, mother — I am greedy of that. 
I used to fancy you would forget me while I was away 
at Aunt Shaw’s, and cry myself to sleep at nights with that 
notion in my head.” 

“ And I used to think, how will Margaret bear our 
makeshift poverty after the thorough comfort and luxury 
in Harley Street, till I have many a time been more 
ashamed of your seeing our contrivances at Helstone than 
of any stranger finding them out.” 

“ Oh, mamma ! and I did so enjoy them. They were 
so much more amusing than all the jog-trot Harley Street 
ways. The wardrobe shelf with handles that served as a 
supper-tray on grand occasions ! And the old tea-chests 
stuffed and covered for ottomans ! I think what you call 
the makeshift contrivances at dear Helstone were a charming 
part of the life there.” 

“ I shall never see Helstone again, Margaret,” said Mrs. 
Hale, the tears welling up into her eyes. Margaret could 
not reply. Mrs. Hale went on. “ While I was there, I 
was for ever wanting to leave it. Every place seemed 
pleasanter. And now I shall die far away from it. I am 
rightly punished.” 

“ You must not talk so,” said Margaret impatiently. 
“He said you might live for years. Oh, mother! we will 
have you back at Helstone yet.” 

“ No, never ! That I must take as a just penance. But, 
Margaret — Frederick ! ” 

At the mention of that one word, she suddenly cried out 

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North and South 

loud, as in some sharp agony. It seemed as if the thought 
of him upset all her composure, destroyed the calm, over- 
came the exhaustion. Wild passionate cry succeeded to 
cry — “ Frederick ! Frederick ! Come to me. I am dying. 
Little first-born child, come to me once again ! ” 

She was in violent hysterics. Margaret went and called 
Dixon in terror. Dixon came in a huff, and accused Margaret 
of having over-excited her mother. Margaret bore all meekly, 
only trusting that her father might not return. In spite 
of her alarm, which was even greater than the occasion 
warranted, she obeyed all Dixon’s directions promptly and 
well without a word of self -justification. By so doing she 
mollified her accuser. They put her mother to bed, and 
Margaret sate by her till she fell asleep, and afterwards till 
Dixon beckoned her out of the room ; and, with a sour face, 
as if doing something against the grain, she bade her drink 
a cup of coffee which she had prepared for her in the 
drawing-room, and stood over her in a commanding attitude 
as she did so. 

“ You shouldn’t have been so curious, miss, and then 
you wouldn’t have needed to fret before your time. It 
would have come soon enough. And now, I suppose, you’ll 
tell master, and a pretty household I shall have of you ! ” 

“ No, Dixon,” said Margaret sorrowfully ; “I will not 
tell papa. He could not bear it as I can.” And, by way 
of proving how well she bore it, she burst into tears. 

“ Ay ! I knew how it would be. Now you’ll waken your 
mamma, just after she’s gone to sleep so quietly. Miss 
Margaret, my dear, I’ve had to keep it down this many a 
week ; and, though I don’t pretend I can love her as you do, 
yet I loved her better than any other man, woman, or child 
— no one but Master Frederick ever came near her in my 
mind. Ever since Lady Beresford’s maid first took me in 
to see her dressed out in white crape, and corn-ears, and 
scarlet poppies, and I ran a needle down into my finger, 
and broke it in, and she tore up her worked pocket-hand- 
kerchief, after they’d cut it out, and came in to wet the 

152 


The Shadow of Death 

bandages again with lotion when she returned from the 
ball — where she’d been the prettiest young lady of all — I’ve 
never loved any one like her. I little thought then that 
I should live to see her brought so low. I don’t mean 
no reproach to nobody. Many a one calls you pretty and 
handsome, and what not. Even in this smoky place, enough 
to blind one’s eyes, the owls can see that. But you’ll never 
be like your mother for beauty — never; not if you live to 
be a hundred.” 

“ Mamma is very pretty still. Poor mamma ! ” 

“ Now don’t ye set off again, or I shall give way at last ” 
(whimpering). “ You’ll never stand master’s coming home, 
and questioning, at this rate. Go out and take a walk, and 
come in something like. Many’s the time I’ve longed to 
walk it off — the thought of what was the matter with her, 
and how it must all end.” 

“ Oh, Dixon ! ” said Margaret, “ how often I’ve been 
cross with you, not knowing what a terrible secret you 
had to bear ! ” 

“ Bless you, child ! I like to see you showing a bit of a 
spirit. It’s the good old Beresford blood. Why, the last 
Sir John but two shot his steward down, there where he 
stood, for just telling him that he’d racked the tenants, and 
he’d racked the tenants till he could get no more money off 
them than he could get skin off a flint.” 

“ Well, Dixon, I won’t shoot you, and I’ll try not to be 
cross again.!’ 

“ You never have. If I’ve said it at times, it has always 
been to myself, just in private, by way of making a little 
agreeable conversation, for there’s no one here fit to talk 
to. And when you fire up you’re the very image of Master 
Frederick. I could find in my heart to put you in a passion 
any day just to see his stormy look coming like a great 
cloud over your face. But now you go out, miss. I’ll 
watch over missus; and as for master, his books are 
company enough for him, if he should come in.” 

“ I will go,” said Margaret. She hung about Dixon for 

*53 


North and South 

a minute or so, as if afraid and irresolute ; then, suddenly 
kissing her, she went quickly out of the room. 

“ Bless her ! ” said Dixon. “ She’s as sweet as a nut. 
There are three people I love : it’s missus, Master Frederick, 
and her. Just them three. That’s all. The rest be hanged, 
for I don’t know what they’re in the world for. Master 
was born, I suppose, for to marry missus. If I thought 
he loved her properly, I might get to love him in time. 
But he should ha’ made a deal more on her, and not been 
always reading, reading, thinking, thinking. See what it 
has brought him to. Many a one who never reads nor 
thinks either, gets to be Bector, and Dean, and what not; 
and I dare say master might, if he’d just minded missus, 
and let the weary reading and thinking alone. — There she 
goes ” (looking out of the window as she heard the front 
door shut). “Poor young lady! her clothes look shabby 
to what they did when she came to Helstone a year ago. 
Then she hadn’t so much as a darned stocking or a cleaned 
pair of gloves in all her wardrobe. And now — ! ” 


CHAPTER XYII 

WHAT IS A STRIKE? 

“ There are briars besetting every path, 

Which call for patient care ; 

There is a cross in every lot, 

And an earnest need for prayer.” 

A. L. Waring. 

Margaret went out heavily and unwillingly enough. But the 
length of a street — yes, the air of a Milton street — cheered 
her young blood before she reached her first turning. Her 
step grew lighter, her lip redder. She began to take notice, 
instead of having her thoughts turned so exclusively inward. 
She saw unusual loiterers in the streets: men with their 

154 


What is a Strike ? 

hands in their pockets sauntering along ; loud-laughing 
and loud-spoken girls clustered together, apparently excited 
to high spirits, and a boisterous independence of temper and 
behaviour. The more ill-looking of the men — the discreditable 
minority — hung about on the steps of the beer-houses and 
gin-shops, smoking, and commenting pretty freely on every 
passer-by. Margaret disliked the prospect of the long walk 
through these streets, before she came to the fields which 
she had planned to reach. Instead, she would go and see 
Bessy Higgins. It would not be so refreshing as a quiet 
country walk, but still it would perhaps be doing the kinder 
thing. 

Nicholas Higgins was sitting by the fire smQking, as she 
went in. Bessy was rocking herself on the other side. 

Nicholas took the pipe out of his mouth, and standing 
up, pushed his chair towards Margaret ; he leant against the 
chimney-piece in a lounging attitude, while she asked Bessy 
how she was. 

“ Hoo’s rather down i’ th’ mouth in regard to spirits, but 
hoo’s better in health. Hoo doesn’t like this strike. Hoo’s 
a deal too much set on peace and quietness at any price.” 

“ This is th’ third strike I’ve seen,” said she, sighing, as if 
that was answer and explanation enough. 

“ Well, third time pays for all. See if we don’t dang 
th’ masters this time. See if they don’t come and beg us to 
come back at our own price. That’s all. We’ve missed 
it afore time, I grant yo’ ; but this time we’n laid plans 
desperate deep.” 

“ Why do you strike ? ” asked Margaret. “ Striking is 
leaving off work till you get your own rate of wages, is it 
not? You must not wonder at my ignorance; where I 
come from I never heard of a strike.” 

“ I wish I were there,” said Bessy wearily. “ But it’s 
not for me to get sick and tired o’ strikes. This is the last 
I’ll see. Before it’s ended I shall be in the Great City — 
the Holy Jerusalem.” 

“ Hoo’s so full of th’ life to come, hoo cannot think of th’ 
155 


North and South 

present. Now I, yo’ see, am bound to do the best I can 
here. I think a bird i’ th’ hand is worth two i’ th’ bush. 
So them’s the different views we take on th’ strike 
question.” 

“ But,” said Margaret, “ if the people struck, as you call 
it, where I come from, as they are mostly all field labourers, 
the seed would not be sown, the hay got in, the corn reaped.” 

“ Well ? ” said he. He had resumed his pipe, and put his 
“ well ” in the form of an interrogation. 

“ Why,” she went on, “ what would become of the 
farmers ? ” 

He puffed away. “ I reckon, they’d have either to give 
up their farms, or to give fair rate of wage.” 

“ Suppose they could not, or would not do the last ; 
they could not give up their farms all in a minute, however 
much they might wish to do so; but they would have no 
hay, nor corn to sell that year ; and where would the money 
come from to pay the labourers’ wages the next ? ” 

Still puffing away. At last he said — 

“ I know nought of your ways down South. I have 
heerd say they’re a pack of spiritless, down-trodden men ; 
welly clemmed to death ; too much dazed wi’ clemming to 
know when they’re put upon. Now, it’s not so here. We 
known when we’re put upon ; and we’en too much blood in 
us to stand it. We just take our hands fro’ our looms, and 
say, 1 Yo’ may clem us, but yo’ll not put upon us, my 
masters ! ’ And be danged to ’em, they shan’t this time ! ” 

“ I wish I lived down South,” said Bessy. 

u There’s a deal to bear there,” said Margaret. “ There 
are sorrows to bear everywhere. There is very hard bodily 
labour to be gone through, with very little food to give 
strength.” 

“ But it’s out of doors,” said Bessy. “ And away from 
the endless, endless noise, and sickening heat.” 

“ It’s sometimes in 'heavy rain, and sometimes in bitter 
cold. A young person can stand it; but an old man gets 
racked with rheumatism, and bent and withered before his 

156 


What is a Strike ? 

time ; yet he must just work on the same, or else go to the 
workhouse.” 

“ I thought yo’ were so taken wi’ the ways of the South 
country.” 

“So I am,” said Margaret, smiling a little, as she found 
herself thus caught. “ I only mean, Bessy, there’s good 
and bad in everything in this world; and, as you felt the 
bad up here, I thought it was but fair you should know 
the bad down there.” 

“ And yo’ say they never strike down there ? ” asked 
Nicholas abruptly. 

“No!” said Margaret; “I think they have too much 
sense.” 

“ An’ I think,” replied he, dashing the ashes out of his 
pipe with so much vehemence that it broke, “ it’s not that 
they’ve too much sense, but that they’ve too little spirit.” 

“ Oh, father ! ” said Bessy, “ what have yo’ gained by 
striking? Think of that first strike when mother died — 
how we all had to clem — you the worst of all; and yet 
many a one went in every week at the same wage, till all 
were gone in that there was work for; and some went 
beggars all their lives at after.” 

“ Ay,” said he. “ That there strike was badly managed. 
Folk got into th’ management of it, as were either fools or 
not true men. Yo’ll see, it’ll be different this time.” 

“ But all this time you’ve not told me what you’re 
striking for,” said Margaret again. 

“ Why, yo’ see, there’s five or six masters who have set 
themselves again’ paying the wages they’ve been paying 
these two years past, and flourishing upon, and getting 
richer upon. And now they come to us, and say we’re to 
take less. And we won’t. We’ll just clem them to death 
first; and see who’ll work -for ’em then. They’ll have 
killed the goose that laid ’em the golden eggs, I reckon.” 

“ And so you plan dying, in order to be revenged upon 
them ! ” 

“No,” said he, “I dunnot. I just look forward to the 
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North and South 

chance of dying at my post sooner than yield. That’s what 
folk call fine and honourable in a soldier, and why not in a 
poor weaver- chap ? ” 

“ But,” said Margaret, “ a soldier dies in the cause of the 
Nation — in the cause of others.” 

He laughed grimly. “ My lass,” said he, “ yo’re but a 
young wench, but don’t yo’ think I can keep three people — 
that’s Bessy, and Mary, and me — on sixteen shilling a 
week? Dun yo’ think it’s for mysel’ I’m striking work at 
this time ? It’s just as much in the cause of others as yon 
soldier — only m’appen, the cause he dies for is just that 
of somebody he never clapt eyes on, nor heerd on all his 
born days, while I take up John Boucher’s cause, as lives 
next door but one, wi’ a sickly wife, and eight childer, none 
on ’em factory age; and I don’t take up his cause only, 
though he’s a poor good-for-nought, as can only manage 
two looms at a time, but I take up th’ cause o’ justice. 
Why are we to have less wage now, I ask, than two year 
ago ? ” 

“ Don’t ask me,” said Margaret ; “ I am very ignorant. 
Ask some of your masters. Surely they will give you a 
reason for it. It is not merely an arbitrary decision of 
theirs, come to without reason.” 

“ Yo’re just a foreigner, and nothing more,” said he 
contemptuously. “ Much yo’ know about it. Ask th’ 
masters ! They’d tell us to mind our own business, and 
they’d mind theirs. Our business being, yo’ understand, to 
take the bated wage, and be thankful; and their business 
to bate us down to clemming point, to swell their profits. 
That’s what it is.” 

“ But,” said Margaret, determined not to give way, 
although she saw she was irritating him, “the state of 
trade may be such as not to enable them to give you the 
same remuneration.” 

“ State o’ trade ! That’s just a piece o’ masters’ humbug. 
It’s rate o’ wages I was talking of. Th’ masters keep th’ 
state o’ trade in their own hands, and just walk it forward 

!5S 


What is a Strike ? 

like a black bug-a-boo, to frighten naughty children with 
into being good. I’ll tell yo’ it’s their part — their cue, as 
some folks call it — to beat us down, to swell their fortunes ; 
and it’s ours to stand up and fight hard — hot for ourselves 
alone, but for them round about us — for justice and fair 
play. We help to make their profits, and we ought to 
help spend ’em. It’s not that we want their brass so much 
this time, as we’ve done many a time afore. We’n getten 
money laid by; and we’re resolved to stand and fall to- 
gether ; not a man on us will go in for less wage than th’ 
Union says is our due. So I say, * Hooray for the strike,’ 
and let Thornton, and Slickson, and Hamper, and their 
set look to it ! ” 

“ Thornton ! ” said Margaret. “ Mr. Thornton of Marl- 
borough Street ? ” 

“ Ay ! Thornton o’ Marlborough Mill, as we call him.” 

“ He is one of the masters you are striving with, is he 
not ? What sort of a master is he ? ” 

“ Did yo’ ever see a bulldog ? Set a bulldog on hind- 
legs, and dress him up in coat and breeches, and yo’n just 
getten John Thornton.” 

“ Nay,” said Margaret, laughing, “ I deny that. Mr. 
Thornton is plain enough, but he’s not like a bulldog, with 
its short broad nose, and snarling upper lip.” 

“ No ! not in look, I grant yo’. But let John Thornton 
get hold on a notion, and he’ll stick to it like a bulldog ; yo’ 
might pull him away wi’ a pitchfork ere he’d leave go. He’s 
worth fighting wi’, is John Thornton. As for Slickson, I 
take it, some o’ these days he’ll wheedle his men back wi’ 
fair promises, that they’ll just get cheated out of as soon 
as they’re in his power again. He’ll work his fines well 
out on ’em, I’ll warrant. He’s as slippery as an eel, he is. 
He’s like a cat — as sleek, and cunning, and fierce. It’ll 
never be an honest up and down fight wi’ him, as it will 
be wi’ Thornton. Thornton’s as dour as a door-nail; an 
obstinate chap, every inch on him — th’ oud bulldog ! ” 

“ Poor Bessy ! ” said Margaret, turning round to her. 
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North and South 

“ You sigh over it all. You don’t like struggling and 
fighting as your father does, do you ? ” 

“ No ! ” said she heavily. “ I’m sick on it. I could 
have wished to have had other talk about me in my latter 
days, than just the clashing and clanging and clattering 
that has wearied a’ my life long, about work and wages, 
and masters, and hands, and knobsticks.” 

“ Poor wench ! latter days be farred ! Thou’rt looking 
a sight better already for a little stir and change. Beside, 
I shall be a deal here to make it more lively for thee.” 

“ Tobacco- smoke chokes me ! ” said she querulously. 

“ Then I’ll never smoke no more i’ th’ house ! ” he replied 
tenderly. “ But why didst thou not tell me afore, thou 
foolish wench ? ” 

She did not speak for a while, and then so low that only 
Margaret heard her — 

“ I reckon, he’ll want a’ the comfort he can get out o’ 
either pipe or drink afore he’s done.” 

Her father went out of doors, evidently to finish his pipe. 

Bessy said passionately — 

“ Now am not I a fool — am I not, miss ? — there, I knew 
I ought for to keep father at home, and away fro’ the folk 
that are always ready for to tempt a man, in time o’ strike, 
to go drink — and there my tongue must needs quarrel with 
this pipe o’ his’n — and he’ll go off, I know he will — as often 
as he wants to smoke — and nobody knows where it’ll end. 
I wish I’d letten myself be choked first.” 

“ But does your father drink ? ” said Margaret. 

“ No — not to say drink,” replied she, still in the same 
wild, excited tone. “But what win ye have? There are 
days wi’ you as wi’ other folk, I suppose, when yo’ get up 
and go through th’ hours, just longing for a bit of a change 
— a bit of a fillip, as it were. I know I ha’ gone and bought 
a four-pounder out o’ another baker’s shop to common on 
such days, just because I sickened at the thought of going 
on for ever wi’ the same sight in my eyes, and the same 
sound in my ears, and the same taste i’ my mouth, and the 

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What is a Strike ? 

same thought (or no thought, for that matter) in my head, 
day after day, for ever. I’ve longed for to be a man to 
go spreeing, even if it were only a tramp to some new place 
in search o’ work. And father — all men — have it stronger 
in ’em than me to get tired o’ sameness and work for ever. 
And what is ’em to do? It’s little blame to them if they 
do go into th’ gin-shop for to make their blood flow quicker, 
and more lively, and see things they never see at no other 
time — pictures, and looking-glass, and such like. But father 
never was a drunkard, though maybe he’s got worse for 
drink, now and then. Only yo’ see,” and now her voice 
took a mournful, pleading tone, “ at times o’ strike there’s 
much to knock a man down, for all they start so hopefully ; 
and where’s the comfort to come fro’ ? He’ll get angry and 
mad — they all do — and then they get tired out wi’ being 
angry and mad, and maybe ha’ done things in their passion 
they’d be glad to forget. Bless yo’r sweet pitiful face ! but 
yo’ dunnot know what a strike is yet.” 

“ Come, Bessy,” said Margaret, “ I won’t say you’re 
exaggerating, because I don’t know enough about it; but, 
perhaps, as you’re not well, you’re only looking on one side, 
and there is another and a brighter to be looked to.” 

“ It’s all well enough for yo’ to say so, who have lived 
in pleasant green places all your life long, and never known 
want or care, or wickedness either, for that matter.” 

“ Take care,” said Margaret, her cheek flushing, and her 
eye lightening, “how you judge, Bessy. I shall go home 
to my mother, who is so ill — so ill, Bessy, that there’s no 
outlet but death for her out of the prison of her great 
suffering; and yet I must speak cheerfully to my father, 
who has no notion of her real state, and to whom the 
knowledge must come gradually. The only person — the 
only one who could sympathise with me and help me — 
whose presence could comfort my mother more than any 
other earthly thing — is falsely accused — would run the risk 
of death if he came to see his dying mother. This I tell 
y 0U _Jx)nly you, Bessy. You must not mention it. No other 

161 M 


North and South 

person in Milton — hardly any other person in England 
knows. Have I not care ? Do I not know anxiety, 
though I go about well-dressed, and have food enough ? 
Oh, Bessy, God is just, and our lots are well portioned 
out by Him, although none but He knows the bitterness of 
our souls.” 

“ I ask your pardon,” replied Bessy humbly. “ Sometimes, 
when I’ve thought o’ my life, and the little pleasure I’ve had 
in it, I’ve believed that maybe I was one of those doomed 
to die by the falling of a star from heaven ; * And the name 
of the star is called Wormwood ; and the third part of the 
waters became wormwood; and men died of the waters, 
because they were made bitter.’ One can bear pain and 
sorrow better if one thinks it has been prophesied long 
before for one : somehow, then it seems as if my pain was 
needed for the fulfilment; otherways it seems all sent for 
nothing.” 

“Nay, Bessy — think ! ” said Margaret. “ God does not 
willingly afflict. Don’t dwell so much on the prophecies, 
but read the clearer parts of the Bible.” 

“ I dare say it would be wiser ; but where would I hear 
such grand words of promise — hear tell o’ anything so far 
different fro’ this dreary world, and this town above a’, as 
in Revelations ? Many’s the time I’ve repeated the verses 
in the seventh chapter to myself, just for the sound. It’s as 
good as an organ, and as different from every day, too. No, 
I cannot give up Revelations. It gives me more comfort 
than any other book i’ the Bible.” 

“ Let me come and read you some of my favourite 
chapters.” 

“ Ay,” said she greedily, “ come. Father will maybe 
hear yo\ He’s deaved wi’ my talking; he says it’s all 
nought to do with the things o’ to-day, and that’s his 
business.” 

“ Where is your sister.” 

“ Gone fustian-cutting. I were loth to let her go ; but 
somehow we must live ; and th’ Union can’t afford us much.” 

162 


Likes and Dislikes 

“ Now I must go. You have done me good, Bessy.” 

“ I done you good ! ” 

“ Yes. I came here very sad, and rather too apt to 
think my own cause for grief was the only one in the world. 
And now I hear how you have had to bear for years, and that 
makes me stronger.” 

“ Bless yo’ ! I thought a’ good-doing was on the side 
of gentlefolk. I shall get proud if I think I can do good 
to yo’.” 

“ You won’t do it if you think about it. But you’ll only 
puzzle yourself if you do, that’s one comfort.” 

“ Yo’re not like no one I ever seed. I dunno what to 
make of yo’.’.’ 

“ Nor I of myself. Good-bye ! ” 

Bessy stilled her rocking to gaze after her. 

“ I wonder if there are many folk like her down South ? 
She’s like a breath of country air, somehow. She freshens 
me up above a bit. Who’d a thought that face — as bright 
and as strong as the angel I dream of — could have known the 
sorrow she speaks on ? I wonder how she’ll sin. All on us 
must sin. I think a deal on her, for sure. But father does 
the like, I see. And Mary even. It’s not often hoo’s stirred 
up to notice much.” 


CHAPTER XVIII 

LIKES AND DISLIKES 

“ My heart revolts within me, and two voices 
Make themselves audible within my bosom.” 

Wallenstein. 

On Margaret’s return home she found two letters on the 
table : one was a note for her mother — the other, which 
had come by the post, was evidently from her Aunt Shaw — 

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North and South 

covered with foreign post-marks — thin, silvery, and rustling. 
She took up the other, and was examining it, when her father 
came in suddenly — 

“ So your mother is tired, and gone to bed early ! I’m 
afraid, such a thundery day was not the best in the world 
for the doctor to see her. What did he say ? Dixon tells 
me he spoke to you about her.” 

Margaret hesitated. Her father’s looks became more 
grave and anxious — 

“ He does not think her seriously ill ? ” 

“Not at present ; she needs care, he says ; he was very 
kind, and he said he would call again, and see how his 
medicines worked.” 

“ Only care — he did not recommend change of air ? — he 
did not say this smoky town was doing her any harm, did 
he, Margaret ? ” 

“ No ! not a word,” she replied gravely. “ He was 
anxious, I think.” 

“Doctors have that anxious manner; it’s professional,” 
said he. 

Margaret saw, in her father’s nervous ways, that the 
first impression of possible danger was made upon his mind, 
in spite of all his making light of what she told him. He 
could not forget the subject — could not pass from it to other 
things; he kept recurring to it through the evening, with 
an unwillingness to receive even the slightest unfavourable 
idea, which made Margaret inexpressibly sad. 

“ This letter is from Aunt Shaw, papa. She has got 
to Naples, and finds it too hot ; so she has taken apartments 
at Sorrento. But I don’t think she likes Italy.” 

“ He did not say anything about diet, did he ? ” 

“ It was to be nourishing, and digestible. Mamma’s 
appetite is pretty good, I think.” 

“ Yes ! and that makes it all the more strange he should 
have thought of speaking about diet. 

“ I asked him, papa.” Another pause. Then Margaret 
went on : “ Aunt Shaw says she has sent me some coral 

164 


Likes and Dislikes 

ornaments, papa ; but,” added Margaret, half smiling, “ she’s 
afraid the Milton Dissenters won’t appreciate them. She 
has got all her ideas of Dissenters from the Quakers, has 
not she ? ” 

“ If ever you hear or notice that your mother wishes for 
anything, be sure you let me know. I am so afraid she 
does not tell me always what she would like. Pray, see 
after that girl Mrs. Thornton .named. If we had a good, 
efficient house- servant, Dixon could be constantly with her, 
and I’d answer for it we’d soon set her up amongst us, if 
care will do it. She’s been very much tired of late, with 
the hot weather, and the difficulty of getting a servant. A 
little rest will put her quite to rights — eh, Margaret ? ” 

“ I hope so,” said Margaret — but so sadly, that her 
father took notice of it. He pinched her cheek. 

“ Come ; if you look so pale as this, I must rouge you 
up a little. Take care of yourself, child, or you’ll be wanting 
the doctor next.” 

But he could not settle to anything that evening. He 
was continually going backwards and forwards, on laborious 
tiptoe, to see if his wife was still asleep. Margaret’s heart 
ached at his restlessness — his trying to stifle and strangle 
the hideous fear that was looming out of the dark places 
of his heart. 

He came back at last, somewhat comforted. 

“ She’s awake now, Margaret. She quite smiled as she 
saw me standing by her. Just her old smile. And she 
says she feels refreshed, and ready for tea. Where’s the 
note for her? She wants to see it. I’ll read it to her 
while you make tea.” 

The note proved to be a formal invitation from Mrs. 
Thornton, to Mr., Mrs., and Miss Hale to dinner, on the 
twenty-first instant. Margaret was surprised to find an 
acceptance contemplated, after all she had learnt of sad 
probabilities during the day. But so it was. The idea of 
her husband’s and daughter’s going to this dinner had 
quite captivated Mrs. Hale’s fancy, even before Margaret 

i 6 5 


North and South 

had heard the contents of the note. It was an event to 
diversify the monotony of the invalid’s life ; and she clung 
to the idea of their going, with even fretful pertinacity, when 
Margaret objected. 

“Nay, Margaret? if she wishes it, I’m sure we’ll both 
go willingly. She never would wish it unless she felt 
herself really stronger — really better than we thought she 
was, eh, Margaret ? ” said Mr. Hale anxiously, as she 
prepared to write the note of acceptance, the next day. 

“ Eh, Margaret ? ” questioned he, with a nervous motion 
of his hands. It seemed cruel to refuse him the comfort he 
craved for. And besides, his passionate refusal to admit 
the existence of fear almost inspired Margaret herself with 
hope. 

“I do think she is better since last night,” said she. 
“ Her eyes look brighter, and her complexion clearer.” 

“ God bless you,” said her father earnestly. “ But is 
it true? Yesterday was so sultry every one felt ill. It 
was a most unlucky day for Dr. Donaldson to see her 
on.” 

So he went away to his day’s duties, now increased by 
the preparation of some lectures he had promised to deliver 
to the working people at a neighbouring Lyceum. He had 
chosen Ecclesiastical Architecture as his subject, rather 
more in accordance with his own taste and knowledge than 
as falling in with the character of the place or the desire 
for particular kinds of information among those to whom 
he was to lecture. And the institution itself, being in debt, 
was only too glad to get a gratis course from an educated 
and accomplished man like Mr. Hale, let the subject be 
what it might. 

“ Well, mother,” asked Mr. Thornton that night, “ who 
have accepted your invitations for the twenty-first ? ” 

“ Fanny, where are the notes ? The Slicksons accept, 
Collingbrooks accept, Stephenses accept, Browns decline. 
Hales — father and daughter come — mother too great an 
invalid — Macphersons come, and Mr. Horsfall, and Mr. 

166 


Likes and Dislikes 

Young. I was thinking of asking the Porters, as the 
Browns can’t come.” 

“ Very good. Do you know, I’m really afraid Mrs. Hale 
is very far from well, from what Dr. Donaldson says.” 

“ It’s strange of them to accept a dinner-invitation if 
she’s very ill,” said Fanny. 

“ I didn’t say very ill,” said her brother rather sharply. 
“ I only said very far from well. They may not know it 
either.” And then he suddenly remembered that, from 
what Dr. Donaldson had told him, Margaret, at any rate, 
must be aware of the exact state of the case. 

“ Very probably they are quite aware of what you said 
yesterday, John — of the great advantage it would be to 
them — to Mr. Hale, I mean, to be introduced to such people 
as the Stephenses and the Collingbrooks.” 

“ I’m sure that motive would not influence them. No ! 
I think I understand how it is.” 

“ John ! ” said Fanny, laughing in her little, weak, nervous 
way. “ How you profess to understand these Hales, and 
how you never will allow that we can know anything about 
them. Are they really so very different to most people one 
meets with ? ” 

She did not mean to vex him ; but, if she had intended 
it, she could not have done it more thoroughly. He chafed 
in silence, however, not deigning to reply to her question. 

“ They do not seem to me out of the common way,” 
said Mrs. Thornton. “ He appears a worthy kind of man 
enough ; rather too simple for trade — so it’s perhaps as 
well he should have been a clergyman first, and now a 
teacher. She’s a bit of a fine lady, with her invalidism; 
and as for the girl — she’s the only one who puzzles me 
when I think about her — which I don’t often do. She 
seems to have a great notion of giving herself airs ; and 
I can’t make out why. I could almost fancy she thinks 
herself too good for her company at times. And yet they’re 
not rich; from all I can hear they never have been.” 

“ And she’s not accomplished, mamma. She can’t play.” 

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North and South 

“ Go on, Fanny. What else does she want to bring her 
up to your standard ? ” 

“Nay, John,” said his mother, “ that speech of Fanny’s 
did no harm. I myself heard Miss Hale say she could not 
play. If you would let us alone, we could perhaps like her, 
and see her merits.” 

“I’m sure I never could! ” murmured Fanny, protected 
by her mother. Mr. Thornton heard, but did not care to 
reply. He was walking up and down the dining-room, 
wishing that his mother would order candles, and allow 
him to set to work at either reading or writing, and so 
put a stop to the conversation. But he never thought of 
interfering in any of the small domestic regulations that 
Mrs. Thornton observed, in habitual remembrance of her 
old economies. 

“ Mother,” said he, stopping, and bravely speaking out 
the truth, “ I wish you would like Miss Hale.” 

“Why,” asked she, startled by his earnest, yet tender 
manner. “You’re never thinking of marrying her? — a girl 
without a penny.” 

“ She would never have me,” said he, with a short laugh. 

“No, I don’t think she would,” answered his mother. 
“ She laughed in my face, when I praised her for speaking 
out something Mr. Bell had said in your favour. I liked 
the girl for doing it so frankly, for it made me sure she 
had no thought of you ; and the next minute she vexed 
me so by seeming to think — Well, never mind ! Only 
you’re right in saying she’s too good an opinion of herself 
to think of you ! The saucy jade ! I should like to know 
where she’d find a better ! ” 

If these words hurt her son, the dusky fight prevented 
him from betraying any emotion. In a minute he came 
up quite cheerfully to his mother, and putting one hand 
lightly on her shoulder, said — 

“ Well, as I’m just as much convinced of the truth of 
what you have been saying as you can be ; and as I have no 
thought or expectation of ever asking her to be my wife, 

168 


Likes and Dislikes 

you’ll believe me for the future that I am quite disinterested 
in speaking about her. I foresee trouble for that girl — 
perhaps, want of motherly care — and I only wish you to be 
ready to be a friend to her, in case she needs one. Now, 
Fanny,” said he, “ I trust you have delicacy enough to under- 
stand, that it is as great an injury to Miss Hale as to me — in 
fact, she would think it greater — to suppose that I have any 
reason, more than I now give, for begging you and my 
mother to show her every kindly attention.” 

“I cannot forgive her her pride,” said his mother; “I 
will befriend her, if there is need, for your asking, John. 
I would befriend Jezebel herself if you asked me. But this 
girl, who turns up her nose at us all — who turns up her nose 
at you ” 

“Nay, mother ; I have never yet put myself, and I mean 
never to put myself, within reach of her contempt.” 

“Contempt, indeed!” — (One of Mrs. Thornton’s ex- 
pressive snorts.) — “ Don’t go on speaking of Miss Hale, 
John, if I’ve to be kind to her. When I’m with her, I 
don’t know if I like or dislike her most ; but when I think 
of her, and hear you talk of her, I hate her. I can see she’s 
given herself airs to you as well as if you’d told me out.” 

“ And if she has,” said he — and then he paused for a 
moment — then went on : “ I’m not a lad, to be cowed by a 
proud look from a woman, or to care for her misunderstand- 
ing me and my position. I can laugh at it ! ” 

“To be sure ! and at her too, with her fine notions, and 
haughty tosses ! ” 

“ I only wonder why you talk so much about her, then,” 
said Fanny. “ I’m sure, I’m tired enough of the subject.” 

“ Well ! ” said her brother, with a shade of bitterness. 
“ Suppose we find some more agreeable subject. What do 
you say to a strike, by way of something pleasant to talk 
about ? ” 

“ Have the hands actually turned out ? ” asked Mrs. 
Thornton, with vivid interest. 

“ Hamper’s men are actually out. Mine are working out 
169 


North and South 

their week, through fear of being prosecuted for breach of 
contract. I’d have had every one of them up and punished 
for it, that left his work before his time was out.” 

“ The law expenses would have been more than the 
hands themselves were worth — a set of ungrateful naughts ! ” 
said his mother. 

“To be sure. But I’d have shown them how I keep 
my word, and how I mean them to keep theirs. They 
know me by this time. Slickson’s men are off — pretty 
certain he won’t spend money in getting them punished. 
We’re in for a turn-out, mother.” 

“ I hope there are not many orders in hand ? ” 

“ Of course there are. They know that well enough. 
But they don’t quite understand all, though they think 
they do.” 

“ What do you mean, John ? ” 

Candles had been brought, and Fanny had taken up her 
interminable piece of worsted-work, over which she was 
yawning ; throwing herself back in her chair, from time to 
time to gaze at vacancy, and think of nothing at her ease. 

“ Why,” said he, “ the Americans are getting their yarns 
so into the general market, that our only chance is pro- 
ducing them at a lower rate. If we can’t, we may shut up 
shop at once, and hands and masters go alike on tramp. 
Yet these fools go back to the prices paid three years ago — 
nay, some of their leaders quote Dickinson’s prices now 
—though they know as well as we do that, what with fines 
pressed out of their wages as no honourable man would 
extort them, and other ways which I for one would scorn to 
use, the real rate of wage paid at Dickinson’s is less than at 
ours. Upon my word, mother, I wish the old combination 
laws were in force. It is too bad to find out that fools — 
ignorant, and wayward men like these — just by uniting their 
weak silly heads, are to rule over the fortunes of those 
who bring all the wisdom that knowledge and experience, 
and often painful thought and anxiety, can give. The next 
thing will be — indeed, we’re all but come to it now — that we 

170 


Likes and Dislikes 

shall have to go and ask — stand hat in hand — and humbly 
ask the secretary of the Spinners’ Union to be so kind as to 
furnish us with labour at their own price. That’s what they 
want — they, who haven’t the sense to see that, if we don’t 
get a fair share of the profits to compensate us for our wear 
and tear here in England, we can move off to some other 
country ; and that, what with home and foreign competition, 
we are none of us likely to make above a fair share, and 
may be thankful enough if we can get that, in an average 
number of years.” 

“ Can’t you get hands from Ireland ? I wouldn’t keep 
these fellows a day. I’d teach them that I was master, and 
could employ what servants I liked.” 

“Yes ! to be sure I can ; and I will, too, if they go on 
long. It will be trouble and expense, and I fear there will 
be some danger ; but I will do it, rather than give in.” 

“ If there is to be all this extra expense, I’m sorry we’re 
giving a dinner just now.” 

“ So am I — not because of the expense, but because I 
shall have much to think about, and many unexpected calls 
on my time. But we must have had Mr. Horsfall, and he 
does not stay in Milton long. And as for the others, we 
owe them dinners, and it’s all one trouble.” 

He kept on with his restless walk — not speaking any 
more, but drawing a deep breath from time to time, as if 
endeavouring to throw off some annoying thought. Fanny 
asked her mother numerous small questions, all having 
nothing to do with the subject which, a wiser person would 
have perceived, was occupying her attention. Consequently, 
she received many short answers. She was not sorry when, 
at ten o’clock, the servants filed in to prayers. These her 
mother always read — first reading a chapter. They were 
now working steadily through the Old Testament. When 
prayers were ended, and his mother had wished him good- 
night, with that long steady look of hers which conveyed no 
expression of the tenderness that was in her heart, but yet 
had the intensity of a blessing, Mr. Thornton continued his 

171 


North and South 

walk. All his business plans had received a check, a sudden 
pull-up, from this approaching turn-out. The forethought 
of many anxious hours was thrown away, utterly wasted by 
their insane folly, which would injure themselves even more 
than him, though no one could set any limit to the mischief 
they were doing. And these were the men who thought 
themselves fitted to direct the masters in the disposal of their 
capital ; Hamper had said, only this very day, that, if he were 
ruined by the strike, he would start life again, comforted by 
the conviction that those who brought it on were in a worse 
predicament than he himself — for he had head as well as 
hands, while they had only hands ; and if they drove away 
their market, they could not follow it, nor turn to anything 
else. But this thought was no consolation to Mr. Thornton. 
It might be that revenge gave him no pleasure ; it might be 
that he valued the position he had earned with the sweat of 
his brow, so much that he keenly felt its being endangered 
by the ignorance or folly of others — so keenly that he had 
no thoughts to spare for what would be the consequences of 
their conduct to themselves. He paced up and down, setting 
his teeth a little now and then. At last it struck two. The 
candles were flickering in their sockets. He lighted his own, 
muttering to himself — 

“ Once for all they shall know whom they have got to 
deal with. I can give them a fortnight — no more. If they 
don’t see their madness before the end of that time, I must 
have hands from Ireland. I believe it’s Slickson’s doing — 
confound him and his dodges ! He thought he was over- 
stocked ; so he seemed to yield at first, when the deputation 
came to him — and, of course, he only confirmed them in their 
folly, as he meant to do. That’s where it spread from.” 


172 


Angel Visits 


CHAPTER XIX 

ANGEL VISITS 

“ As angels in some brighter dreams 
Call to the sonl when man doth sleep, 

So some strange thoughts transcend our wonted themes, 
And into glory peep.” 

Henry Vaughan. 

Mrs. Hale was curiously amused and interested by the idea 
of the Thornton dinner-party. She kept wondering about 
the details, with something of the simplicity of a little child, 
who wants to have all its anticipated pleasure described 
beforehand. But the monotonous life led by invalids 
often makes them like children, inasmuch as they have 
neither of them any sense of proportion in events, and seem 
each to believe that the walls and curtains which shut in 
their world, and shut out everything else, must of necessity 
be larger than anything hidden beyond. Besides, Mrs. Hale 
had had her vanities as a girl ; had perhaps unduly felt their 
mortification when she became a poor clergyman’s wife ; — 
they had been smothered and kept down ; but they were not 
extinct; and she liked to think of seeing Margaret dressed 
for a party, and discussed what she should wear, with an 
unsettled anxiety that amused Margaret, who had been more 
accustomed to society in her one year in Harley Street than 
her mother in five and twenty years of Helstone. 

“ Then, you think you shall wear your white silk ? Are you 
sure it will fit ? It’s nearly a year since Edith was married ! ” 
“ Oh yes, mamma ! Mrs. Murray made it, and it’s sure 
to be right ; it may be a straw’s -breadth shorter or longer- 
wasted, according to my having grown fat or thin. But I 
don’t think I’ve altered in the least.” 

“ Hadn’t you better let Dixon see it ? It may have gone 
yellow with lying by.” 


i73 


North and South 

“ If you like, mamma. But, if the worst comes to the 
worst, I’ve a very nice pink gauze which Aunt Shaw gave 
me, only two or three months before Edith was married. 
That can’t have gone yellow.” 

“ No ! but it may have faded.” 

“ Well ! then I’ve a green silk. I feel more as if it was 
the embarrassment of riches.” 

“ I wish I knew what you ought to wear,” said Mrs. 
Hale nervously. 

Margaret’s manner changed instantly. “ Shall I go and 
put them on one after another, mamma, and then you could 
see which you liked best ? ” 

“ But — yes ! perhaps that will be best.” 

So off Margaret went. She was very much inclined to 
play some pranks when she was dressed up at such an 
unusual hour ; to make her rich white silk balloon out into 
a cheese, to retreat backwards from her mother as if she 
were the queen; but when she found that these freaks of 
hers were regarded as interruptions to the serious business, 
and as such annoyed her mother, she became grave and 
sedate. What had possessed the world (her world) to fidget 
so about her dress, she could not understand ; but that very 
afternoon, on naming her engagement to Bessy Higgins 
(a propos of the servant that Mrs. Thornton had promised to 
inquire about), Bessy quite roused up at the intelligence. 

“ Dear ! and are you going to dine at Thornton’s at 
Marlborough Mills ? ” 

“ Yes, Bessy. Why are you so surprised ? ” 

“ Oh, I dunno. But they visit wi’ a’ th’ first folk in 
Milton.” 

“ And you don’t think we’re quite the first folk in Milton, 
eh, Bessy ? ” 

Bessy’s cheeks flushed a little at her thought being thus 
easily read. 

“ Well,” said she, “ yo’ see, they thinken a deal o’ money 
here ; and I reckon yo’ve not getten much.” 

“No,” said - Margaret, “that’s very true. But we are 
*74 


Angel Visits 

educated people, and have lived amongst educated people. 
Is there anything so wonderful, in our being asked out to 
dinner by a man who owns himself inferior to my father by 
coming to him to be instructed ? I don’t mean to blame 
Mr. Thornton. Few drapers’ assistants, as he was once, 
could have made themselves what he is.” 

“ But can yo’ give dinners back, in yo’r small house ? 
Thornton’s house is three times as big.” 

“ Well, I think we could manage to give Mr. Thornton 
a dinner back, as you call it. Perhaps not in such a large 
room, nor with so many people. But I don’t think we’ve 
thought about it at all in that way.” 

“ I never thought yo’d be dining with Thorntons,” re- 
peated Bessy. “ Why, the mayor hissel’ dines there ; and 
the members of Parliament and all.” 

“I think I could support the honour of meeting the 
mayor of Milton.” 

“ But them ladies dress so gi^md ! ” said Bessy, with an 
anxious look at Margaret’s print gown, which her Milton 
eyes appraised at sevenpence a yard. 

Margaret’s face dimpled up into a merry laugh. “ Thank 
you, Bessy, for thinking so kindly about my looking nice 
among all the smart people. But I’ve plenty of grand 
gowns — a week ago, I should have said they were far too 
grand for anything I should ever want again. But as 
I’m to dine at Mr. Thornton’s, and perhaps to meet the 
mayor, I shall put on my very best gown, you may be 
sure.” 

“ What win yo’ wear ? ” asked Bessy, somewhat relieved. 

“ White silk,” said Margaret. “ A gown I had for a 
cousin’s wedding, a year ago.” 

“ That’ll do ! ” said Bessy, falling back in her chair. 
“ I should be loth to have yo’ looked down upon.” 

“ Oh ! I’ll be fine enough, if that will save me from being 
looked down upon in Milton.” 

“ I wish I could see you dressed up,” said Bessy. 
“ I reckon yo’re not what folk would ca’ pretty ; yo’ve not 

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red and white enough for that. But dun yo’ know, I ha’ 
dreamt of yo’, long afore ever I seed yo’.” 

“ Nonsense, Bessy ! ” 

“ Ay, but I did. Yo’r very face — looking wi’ yo’r clear 
steadfast eyes out o’ th’ darkness, wi’ yo’r hair blown off 
from yo’r brow, and going out like rays round yo’r forehead, 
which was just as smooth and straight as it is now — and 
yo’ always came to give me strength, which I seemed to 
gather out o’ yo’r deep comforting eyes — and yo’ were drest 
in shining raiment — just as yo’r going to be drest. So, yo’ 
see, it was yo’ ! ” 

“Nay, Bessy,” said Margaret gently, “ it was but a 
dream.” 

“ And why might na I dream a dream in my affliction 
as well as others ? Did not many a one i’ the Bible ? Ay, 
and see visions too ! Why, even my father thinks a deal 
o’ dreams ? I tell yo’ again, I saw yo’ as plainly, coming 
swiftly towards me, wi’ ya’r hair blown back wi’ the very 
swiftness o’ the motion, just like the way it grows, a little 
standing off like ; and the white shining dress on yo’ve 
getten to wear. Let me come and see yo’ in it. I want 
to see yo’ and touch yo’ as in very deed yo’ were in my 
dream.” 

“ My dear Bessy, it is quite a fancy of yours.” 

“ Fancy or no fancy — yo’ve come, as I knew yo’ would, 
when I saw yo’r movement in my dream — and when yo’re 
here about me, I reckon I feel easier in my mind, and 
comforted, just as a fire comforts one on a dree day. Yo’ 
said it were on th’ twenty-first ; please God, I’ll come and 
see yo’.” 

“ 0 Bessy ! you may come and welcome ; but don’t talk 
so — it really makes me sorry. It does indeed.” 

“ Then I’ll keep it to mysel’, if I bite my tongue out. 
Not but what it’s true for all that.” 

Margaret was silent. At last she said — 

“ Let us talk about it sometimes, if you think it true. 
But not now. Tell me, has your father turned out ? ” 

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“ Ay ! ” said Bessy heavily — in a manner very different 
from that she had spoken in but a minute or two before. 
“ He and many another — all Hamper’s men — and many a 
one besides. Th’ women are as bad as th’ men in their 
savageness, this time. Food is high — and they mun have 
food for their childer, I reckon. Suppose Thornton’s sent 
’em their dinner out — th’ same money, spent on potatoes 
and meal, would keep many a crying baby quiet, and hush 
up its mother’s heart for a bit ! ” 

“ Don’t speak so ! ” said Margaret. “ You’ll make me 
feel wicked and guilty in going to this dinner.” 

“ No ! ” said Bessy. “ Some’s pre-elected to sumptuous 
feasts, and purple and fine linen — may be yo’re one on 
’em. Others toil and moil all their lives long — and the 
very dogs are not pitiful in our days, as they were in 
the days of Lazarus. But if yo’ ask me to cool yo’r 
tongue wi’ th’ tip of my finger, I’ll come across the great 
gulf to yo’ just for th’ thought o’ what yo’ve been to me 
here.” 

“ Bessy ; you’re very feverish ! I can tell it in the touch 
of your hand, as well as in what you’re saying. It won’t 
be division enough, in that awful day, that some of us have 
been beggars here, and some of us have been rich — we 
shall not be judged by that poor accident, but by our 
faithful following of Christ.” 

Margaret got up, and found some water : and soaking 
her pocket-handkerchief in it, she laid the cool wetness on 
Bessy’s forehead, and began to chafe the stone-cold feet. 
Bessy shut her eyes, and allowed herself to be soothed. 
At last she said — 

“ Yo’d ha’ been deaved out o’ yo’r five wits, as well as 
me, if yo’d had one body after another coming in to ask 
for father, and staying to tell me each one their tale. Some 
spoke o’ deadly hatred, and made my blood run cold wi’ 
the terrible things they said o’ th’ masters— but more, being 
women, kept plaining, plaining (wi’ the tears running down 
their cheeks, and never wiped away, nor heeded), of the 

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price o’ meat, and how their childer could na sleep at nights 
for th’ hunger.” 

“ And do they think the strike will mend this ? ” asked 
Margaret. 

“ They say so,” replied Bessy. “ They do say trade has 
been good for long, and the masters has made no end o’ 
money; how much father deesn’t know, but, in course, th’ 
Union does ; and, as it is natural, they wanted their share 
o’ th’ profits, now that food is getting dear ; and th’ Union 
says they’ll not be doing their duty if they don’t make the 
masters give ’em their share. But masters has getten th’ 
upper hand somehow ; and I’m feared they’ll keep it now 
and evermore. It’s like th’ great battle o’ Armageddon, the 
way they keep on, grinning and fighting at each other, till, 
even while they fight, they are picked off into the pit.” 

Just then, Nicholas Higgins came in. He caught his 
daughter’s last words. 

“ Ay ! and 111 fight on too ; and I’ll get it this time. 
It’ll not take long for to make ’em give in, for they’ve getten 
a pretty lot of orders, all under contract ; and they’ll soon 
find out they’d better give us our five per cent, than lose 
the profit they 11 gain ; let alone the fine for not fulfilling 
the contract. Aha, my masters ! I know wholl win.” 

Margaret fancied from his manner that he must have 
been drinking, not so much from what he said, as from 
the excited way in which he spoke; and she was rather 
confirmed in this idea by the evident anxiety Bessy showed 
to hasten her departure. Bessy said to her — 

“ The twenty-first — that’s Thursday week. I may come 
and see yo’ dressed for Thornton’s, I reckon. What time 
is yo’r dinner ? ” 

Before Margaret could answer, Higgins broke out — 

“ Thornton’s ! Ar’ t’ going to dine at Thornton’s ? Ask 
him to give yo’ a bumper to the success of his orders. By 
th’ twenty-first, I reckon, he’ll be pottered in his brains how 
to get ’em done in time. Tell him, there’s seven hundred 
'11 come marching into Marlborough Mills, the morning 

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after he gives the five per cent., and will help him through 
his contract in no time. You’ll have ’em all there. My 
master, Hamper, he’s one o’ th’ oud-fashioned sort. Ne’er 
meets a man bout an oath or a curse; I should think he 
were going to die if he spoke me civil; but arter all, his 
bark’s waur than his bite, and yo’ may tell him one o’ his 
turn-outs said so, if yo’ like. Eh ! but yo’ll have a lot of 
prize mill- owners at Thornton’s ! I should like to get 
speech o’ them, when they’re a bit inclined to sit still after 
dinner, and could na run for the life on ’em. I’d tell ’em 
my mind. I’d speak up again th’ hard way they’re driving 
on us ! ” 

“ Good-bye ! ” said Margaret hastily. “ Good-bye, Bessy ! 
I shall look to see you on the twenty-first, if you’re well 
enough.” 

The medicines and treatment which Dr. Donaldson had 
ordered for Mrs. Hale did her so much good at first that, 
not only she herself, but Margaret began to hope that he 
might have been mistaken, and that she could recover 
permanently. As for Mr. Hale, although he had never had 
an idea of the serious nature of their apprehensions, he 
triumphed over their fears with an evident relief, which 
proved how much his glimpse into the nature of them had 
affected him. Only Dixon croaked for ever into Margaret’s 
ear. However, Margaret defied the raven, and would hope. 

They needed this gleam of brightness in-doors, for out-of- 
doors, even to their uninstructed eyes, there was a gloomy 
brooding appearance of discontent. Mr. Hale had his own 
acquaintances among the working-men, and was depressed 
with their earnestly- told tales of suffering and long endurance. 
They would have scorned to speak of what they had to bear 
to any one who might, from his position, have understood 
it without their words. But here was this man, from a 
distant county, who was perplexed by the workings of the 
system into the midst of which he was thrown ; and each 
was eager to make him a judge, and to bring witness of his 
own causes for irritation. Then Mr. Hale brought all hifl 

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budget of grievances, and laid it before Mr. Thornton, for 
him, with his experience as a master, to arrange them, and 
explain their origin ; which he always did, on sound 
economical principles ; showing that, as trade was con- 
ducted, there must always be a waxing and waning of 
commercial prosperity; and that in the waning a certain 
number of masters, as well as of men, must go down into 
ruin, and be no more seen among the ranks of the happy 
and prosperous. He spoke as if this consequence were so 
entirely logical, that neither employer nor employed had 
any right to complain if it became their fate — the employer’s, 
to turn aside from the race he could no longer run, with a 
bitter sense of incompetency and failure — wounded in the 
struggle — trampled down by his fellows in their haste to 
get rich — slighted where he once was honoured — humbly 
asking for, instead of bestowing, employment with a lordly 
hand. Of course, speaking so of the fate that, as a master, 
might be his own in the fluctuations of commerce, he was 
not likely to have more sympathy with that of the workmen, 
who were passed by in the swift merciless improvement or 
alteration ; who would fain lie down and quietly die out of 
the world that needed them not, but felt as if they could 
never rest in their graves for the clinging cries of the 
beloved and helpless they would leave behind ; who envied 
the power of the wild bird, that can feed her young with 
her very heart’s blood. Margaret’s whole soul rose up 
against him while he reasoned in this way — as if commerce 
were everything and humanity nothing. She could hardly 
thank him for the individual kindness, which brought him 
that very evening to offer her — for the delicacy which made 
him understand that he must offer her privately — every 
convenience for illness that his own wealth or his mother’s 
foresight had caused them to accumulate in their household, 
and which, as he learnt from Dr. Donaldson, Mrs. Hale 
might possibly require. His presence, after the way he 
had spoken — his bringing before her the doom, which she 
was vainly trying to persuade herself might yet be averted 

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from her mother — all conspired to set Margaret’s teeth on 
edge, as she looked at him, and listened to him. What 
business had he to be the only person, except Dr. Donaldson 
and Dixon, admitted to the awful secret, which she held 
shut up in the most dark and sacred recess of her heart — 
not daring to look at it, unless she invoked heavenly strength 
to bear the sight — that, some day soon, she should cry 
aloud for her mother, and no answer would come out of 
the blank, dumb darkness ? Yet he knew all. She saw 
it in his pitying eyes. She heard it in his grave and tremu- 
lous voice. How reconcile those eyes, that voice, with the 
hard, reasoning, dry, merciless way in which he laid down 
axioms of trade, and serenely followed them out to their 
full consequences ? The discord jarred upon her inex- 
pressibly. The more because of the gathering woe of which 
she heard from Bessy. To be sure, Nicholas Higgins, the 
father, spoke differently. He had been appointed a com- 
mittee-man, and said that he knew secrets of which the 
exoteric knew nothing. He said this more expressly and 
particularly, on the very day before Mrs. Thornton’s dinner- 
party, when Margaret, going in to speak to Bessy, found 
him arguing the point with Boucher, the neighbour of 
whom she had frequently heard mention, as by turns ex- 
citing Higgins’s compassion, as an unskilful workman with 
a large family depending upon him for support, and at 
other times enraging his more energetic and sanguine neigh- 
bour by his want of what the latter called spirit. It was 
very evident that Higgins was in a passion when Margaret 
entered. Boucher stood, with both hands on the rather 
high mantelpiece, swaying himself a little on the support 
which his arms, thus placed, gave him, and looking wildly 
into the fire, with a kind of despair that irritated Higgins, 
even while it went to his heart. Bessy was rocking herself 
violently backwards and forwards, as was her wont (Margaret 
knew by this time) when she was agitated. Her sister 
Mary was trying on her bonnet (in great clumsy bows, as 
suited her great clumsy fingers), to go to her fustian-cutting ; 

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blubbering out loud the while, and evidently longing to be 
away from a scene that distressed her. 

Margaret came in upon this scene. She stood for a 
moment at the door — then, her finger on her lips, she stole 
to a seat on the squab near Bessy. Nicholas saw her come 
in, and greeted her with a gruff, but not unfriendly, nod. 
Mary hurried out of the house, catching gladly at the open 
door, and crying aloud when she got away from her father’s 
presence. It was only John Boucher that took no notice 
whatever who came in and who went out. 

“ It’s no use, Higgins. Hoo cannot live long a’ this’n. 
Hoo’s just sinking away — not for want o’ meat hersel’ — but 
because hoo cannot stand th’ sight o’ the little one’s clem- 
ming. Ay, clemming ! Five shilling a week may do well 
enough for thee, wi’ but two mouths to fill, and one on ’em 
a wench who can welly earn her own meat. But it’s clem- 
ming to us. An’ I tell thee plain — if hoo dies, as I’m ’feared 
hoo will afore we’ve getten th’ five per cent., I’ll fling th’ 
money back i’ th’ master’s face, and say — ‘ Be domned to 
yo’ ; be domned to th’ whole cruel world o’ yo’ ; that could 
na leave me th’ best wife that ever bore childer to a man ! ’ 
An’ look thee, lad, I’ll hate thee, and th’ whole pack o’ th’ 
Union. Ay, an’ chase yo’ through heaven wi’ my hatred, 
— I will, lad ! I will, — if yo’re leading me astray i’ this 
matter. Thou saidst, Nicholas, on Wednesday sennight — 
and it’s now Tuesday i’ th’ second week— that afore a 
fortnight we’d ha’ the masters coming a-begging to us to 
take back our work, at our own wage — and time’s nearly 
up — and there’s our lile Jack lying a-bed, too weak to cry, 
but just every now and then sobbing up his heart for want 
o’ food, — our lile Jack, I tell thee, lad! Hoo’s never looked 
up sin’ he were born, and hoo loves him as if he were her 
very life — as he is — for I reckon he’ll ha’ cost me that 
precious price — our lile Jack, who wakened me each morn 
wi’ putting his sweet little lips to my great rough fou’ face, 
a-seeking a smooth place to kiss— an’ he lies clemming.” 
Here the deep sobs choked the poor man, and Nicholas 

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looked up, with eyes brimful of tears, to Margaret, before 
be could gain courage to speak. 

“ Hou’d up, man. Tby lile Jack shall na’ clem. I ha’ 
getten brass, and we’ll go buy the chap a sup o’ milk an’ a 
good four-pounder this very minute. What’s mine’s thine, 
sure enough, i’ tbou’st i’ want. Only, dunnot lose heart, 
man ! ” continued he, as he fumbled in a tea-pot for what 
money he had. “ I lay yo’ my heart and soul we’ll win for 
a’ this : it’s but bearing on one more week, and yo’ just see 
th’ way th’ masters ’ll come round, praying on us to come 
back to our mills. An’ th’ Union — that’s to say, I — will 
take care yo’ve enough for th’ childer and th’ missus. So 
dunnot turn faint-heart, and go to th’ tyrants a-seeking work.” 

The man turned round at these words, — turned round a 
face so white, and gaunt, and tear-furrowed, and hopeless, 
that it’s very calm forced Margaret to weep. 

“ Yo’ know well, that a worser tyrant than e’er th’ masters 
were says, ‘ Clem to death, and see ’em a’ clem to death, ere 
yo’ dare go again’ th’ Union.’ Yo’ know it well, Nicholas, 
for a’ yo’re one on ’em. Yo’ may be kind hearts, each 
separate ; but, once banded together, yo’ve no more pity for 
a man than a wild hunger- maddened wolf.” 

Nicholas had his hand on the lock of the door — he 
stopped and turned round on Boucher, close following — 

“ So help me God ! man alive — if I think not I’m doing 
best for thee, and for all on us. If I’m going wrong when 
I think I’m going right, it’s their sin, who ha’ left me where 
I am, in my ignorance. I ha’ thought till my brains ached 
— beli’ me, John, I have. An’ I say again, there’s no help 
for us but having faith i’ th’ Union. They’ll win the day, 
see if they dunnot ! ” 

Not one word had Margaret or Bessy spoken. They 
had hardly uttered the sighing, that the eyes of each called 
to the other to bring up from the depths of her heart. At 
last Bessy said, 

“ I never thought to hear father call on God again. But 
yo’ heard him say, ‘ So help me God ! ’ ” 

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“ Yes ! ” said Margaret. “ Let me bring you what money 
I can spare, — let me bring you a little food for that poor 
man’s children. Don’t let them know it comes from any 
one but your father. It will be but little.” 

Bessy lay back without taking any notice of what 
Margaret said. She did not cry — she only quivered up her 
breath. 

“ My heart’s drained dry o’ tears,” she said. “ Boucher’s 
been, in these days past, a-telling me of his fears and his 
troubles. He’s but a weak kind of chap, I know, but he’s a 
man for a’ • that ; and tho’ I’ve been angry, many a time 
afore now, wi’ him an’ his wife, as knew no more nor him 
how to manage, yet yo’ see, all folks isn’t wise, yet God lets 
’em live — ay, an’ gives ’em some one to love, and be beloved 
by, just as good as Solomon. An’ if sorrow comes to them 
they love, it hurts ’em as sore as e’er it did Solomon. I 
can’t make it out. Perhaps it’s as well such a one as 
Boucher has th’ Union to see after him. But I’d just like 
for to see th’ men as make th’ Union, and put ’em one by 
one face to face wi’ Boucher. I reckon, if they heard him, 
they’d tell him (if I cotched ’em one by one) he might go 
back and get what he could for his work, even if it weren’t 
so much as they ordered.” 

Margaret sat utterly silent. How was she ever to go 
away into comfort and forget that man’s voice, with the tone 
of unutterable agony, telling more by far than his words of 
what he had to suffer ? She took out her purse ; she had 
not much in it of what she could call her own ; but what she 
had she put into Bessy’s hands without speaking. 

“ Thank yo’. There’s many on ’em gets no more, and is 
not so bad off — leastways does not show it as he does. But 
father won’t let ’em want, now he knows. Yo’ see, Boucher’s 
been pulled down wi’ his childer — and her being so cranky, 
and a’ they could pawn has gone this last twelvemonth. 
Yo’re not to think we’d ha’ letten ’em clem, for all we’re a 
bit pressed oursel’ ; if neighbours doesn’t see after neighbours, 
I dunno who will.” Bessy seemed almost afraid lest 

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Men and Gentlemen 

Margaret should think they had not the will, and to a 
certain degree, the power of helping one whom she evidently 
regarded as having a claim upon them. “ Besides,” she 
went on, “ father is sure and positive the masters must give 
in within these next few days — that they canna hould on 
much longer. But I thank yo’ all the same — I thank yo’ 
for mysel’, as much as for Boucher, for it just makes my 
heart warm to yo’ more and more.” 

Bessy seemed much quieter to-day, but fearfully languid 
and exhausted. As she finished speaking, she looked so 
faint and weary that Margaret became alarmed. 

“ It’s nout,” said Bessy. “ It’s not death yet. I had a 
fearfu’ night wi’ dreams — or somewhat like dreams, for I 
were wide awake — and I’m all in a swounding daze to-day — 
only yon poor chap made me live again. No ! it’s not death 
yet, but death is not far off. Ay. Cover me up, and I’ll 
maybe sleep, if th’ cough will let me. Good night— good 
afternoon, m’appen I should say— but th’ light is dim an’ 
misty to-day.” 


CHAPTER XX 

MEN AND GENTLEMEN 

“ Old and young, boy, let ’em all eat, I have it ; 

Let ’em have ten tire of teeth a-piece, I care not.** 

Kollo, Duke of Normandy. 

Margaret went home so painfully occupied with what she 
had heard and seen that she hardly knew how to rouse her- 
self up to the duties which awaited her ; the necessity for 
keeping up a constant flow of cheerful conversation for her 
mother, who, now that she was unable to go out, always 
looked to Margaret’s return from the shortest walk as 
bringing in some news. 

* 8 5 


North and South 

“ And can your factory friend come on Thursday to see 
you dressed ? ” 

“ She was so ill I never thought of asking her,” said 
Margaret dolefully. 

“ Dear ! Everybody is ill now, I think,” said Mrs. Hale, 
with a little of the jealousy which one invalid is apt to feel 
of another. “ But it must be very sad to be ill in one of 
those little back streets."* (Her kindly nature prevailing, 
and the old Helstone habits of thought returning.) “It’s 
bad enough here. What could you do for her, Margaret ? 
Mr. Thornton has sent me some of his old port wine since 
you went out. Would a bottle of that do her good, think 
you ? ” 

“No, mamma ! I don’t believe they are very poor — at 
least, they don’t speak as if they were; and, at any rate, 
Bessy’s illness is consumption — she won’t want wine. 
Perhaps, I might take her a little preserve, made of our dear 
Helstone fruit. No ! there’s another family to whom I 
should like to give — O mamma, mamma ! how am I to dress 
up in my finery, and go off and away to smart parties, after 
the sorrow I have seen to-day ? ” exclaimed Margaret, 
bursting the bounds she had pre-ordained for herself before 
she came in, and telling her mother what she had seen and 
heard at Higgins’s cottage. 

It distressed Mrs. Hale excessively. It made her 
restlessly irritated till she could do something. She directed 
Margaret to pack up a basket in the very drawing-room, to 
be sent there and then to the family ; and was almost angry 
with her for saying, that it would not signify if it did not go 
till morning, as she knew Higgins had provided for their 
immediate wants, and she herself had left money with Bessy. 
Mrs. Hale called her unfeeling for saying this ; and never 
gave herself breathing-time till the basket was sent out of 
the house. Then she said — 

“ After all, we may have been doing wrong. It was 
only the last time Mr. Thornton was here that he said, those 
were no true friends who help to prolong the struggle by 

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Men and Gentlemen 

assisting the turn-outs. And this Boucher man was a turn- 
out, was he not ? ” 

The question was referred to Mr. Hale by his wife, when 
he came upstairs, fresh from giving a lesson to Mr. 
Thornton, which had ended in conversation, as was their 
wont. Margaret did not care if their gifts had prolonged 
the strike ; she did not think far enough for that, in her 
present excited state. 

Mr. Hale listened, and tried to be as calm as a judge ; he 
recalled all that had seemed so clear not half-an-hour before, 
as it came out of Mr. Thornton’s lips ; and then he made ar 
unsatisfactory compromise. His wife and daughter had not 
only done quite right in this instance, but he did not see for 
a moment how they could have done otherwise. Neverthe- 
less, as a general rule, it was very true what Mr. Thornton 
said, that as the strike, if prolonged, must end in the masters 
bringing hands from a distance (if, indeed, the final result 
were not, as it had often been before, the invention of some 
machine which would diminish the need of hands at all), 
why, it was clear enough that the kindest thing was to refuse 
all help which might bolster them up in their folly. But 
as to this Boucher, he would go and see him the first thing 
in the morning, and try and find out what could be done 
for him. 

Mr. Hale went the next morning, as he proposed. He 
did not find Boucher at home, but he had a long talk with 
his wife ; promised to ask for an Infirmary order for her ; 
and, seeing the plenty provided by Mrs. Hale, and some- 
what lavishly used by the children, who were masters down- 
stairs in their father’s absence, he came back with a more 
consoling and cheerful account than Margaret had dared to 
hope for; indeed, what she had said the night before had 
prepared her father for so much worse a state of things that, 
.by a reaction of his imagination, he described all as better 
than it really was. 

“ But I will go again, and see the man himself,” said 
Mr. Hale. “ I hardly know as yet how to compare one of 

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these houses with our Helstone cottages. I see furniture here 
which our labourers would never have thought of buying, and 
food commonly used which they would consider luxuries ; 
yet for these very families there seems no other resource 
now that their weekly wages were stopped, but the pawn- 
shop. One had need to learn a different language, and 
measure by a different standard, up here in Milton/’ 

Bessy, too, was rather better this day. Still she was so 
weak that she seemed to have entirely forgotten her wish to 
see Margaret dressed — if, indeed, that had not been the 
feverish desire of a half -delirious state. 

Margaret could not help comparing this strange dressing 
of hers, to go where she did not care to be — her heart heavy 
with various anxieties — with the old, merry, girlish toilettes 
that she and Edith had performed scarcely more than a year 
ago. Her only pleasure now in decking herself out was in 
thinking that her mother would take delight in seeing her 
dressed. She blushed when Dixon, throwing the drawing- 
room door open, made an appeal for admiration. 

“ Miss Hale looks well, ma’am,- — doesn’t she ? Mrs. 
Shaw’s coral couldn’t have come in better. It just gives the 
right touch of colour, ma’am. Otherwise, Miss Margaret, 
you would have been too pale.” 

Margaret’s black hair was too thick to be plaited ; it 
needed rather to be twisted round and round, and have its 
fine silkiness compressed into massive coils, that encircled 
her head like a crown, and then were gathered into a 
large spiral knot behind. She kept its weight together 
by two large coral pins, like small arrows for length. 
Her white silk sleeves were looped up with strings of the 
same material, and on her neck, just below the base of 
her curved and milk-white throat, there lay heavy coral 
beads. 

“ Oh, Margaret ! how I should like to be going with you . 
to one of the old Barrington assemblies — taking you as 
Lady Beresford used to take me.” 

Margaret kissed her mother for this little burst of maternal 
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Men and Gentlemen 

vanity ; but she could hardly smile at it, she felt so much out 
of spirits. 

“ I would rather stay at home with you, — much rather, 
mamma.” 

“ Nonsense, darling ! Be sure you notice the dinner 
well. I should like to hear how they manage these things 
in Milton. Particularly the second course, dear. Look 
what they have instead of game.” 

Mrs. Hale would have been more than interested, — she 
would have been astonished, if she had seen the sumptuous - 
ness of the dinner-table and its appointments. Margaret, 
with her London cultivated taste, felt the number of delicacies 
to be oppressive ; one half of the quantity would have been 
enough, and the effect lighter and more elegant. But it was 
one of Mrs. Thornton’s rigorous laws of hospitality, that of 
each separate dainty enough should be provided for all the 
guests to enjoy, if they felt inclined. Careless to abstemi- 
ousness in her daily habits, it was part of her pride to set a 
feast before such of her guests as cared for it. Her son 
shared this feeling. He had never known — though he might 
have imagined, and had the capability to relish — any kind 
of society but that which depended on an exchange of superb 
meals ; and even now, though he was denying himself the 
personal expenditure of an unnecessary sixpence, and had 
more than once regretted that the invitations for this dinner 
had been sent out, still, as it was to be, he was glad to see 
the old magnificence of preparation. 

Margaret and her father were the first to arrive. Mr. 
Hale was anxiously punctual to the time specified. There 
was no one upstairs in the drawing-room but Mrs. 
Thornton and Fanny. Every cover was taken off, and the 
apartment blazed forth in yellow silk damask and a brilliantly- 
flowered carpet. Every corner seemed filled up with orna- 
ment, until it became a weariness to the eye, and presented 
a strange contrast to the bald ugliness of the look-out into 
the great mill-yard, where wide folding gates were thrown 
open for the admission of carriages* The mill loomed high 

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on the left-hand side of the windows, casting a shadow down 
from its many storeys, which darkened the summer evening 
before its time. 

“ My son was engaged up to the last moment on business. 
He will be here directly, Mr. Hale. May I beg you to take 
a seat ? ” 

Mr. Hale was standing at one of the windows as Mrs. 
Thornton spoke. He turned away, saying — 

“ Don’t you find such a close neighbourhood to the mill 
rather unpleasant at times ? ” 

She drew herself up — 

“ Never. I am not become so fine as to desire to forget 
the source of my son’s wealth and power. Besides, there is 
not such another factory in Milton. One room alone is two 
hundred and twenty square yards.” 

“ I meant that the smoke and the noise — the constant 
going out and coming in of the workpeople, might be 
annoying ! ” 

“ I agree with you, Mr. Hale ! ” said Fanny. “ There is 
a continual smell of steam, and oily machinery — and the 
noise is perfectly deafening.” 

“ I have heard noise that is called music far more deafen- 
ing. The engine-room is at the street-end of the factory ; we 
hardly hear it, except in summer weather, when all the 
windows are open ; and, as for the continual murmur of the 
workpeople, it disturbs me no more than the humming of a 
hive of bees. If I think of it at all, I connect it with my son, 
and feel how all belongs to him, and that his is the head 
that directs it. Just now, there are no sounds to come from 
the mill ; the hands have been ungrateful enough to turn 
out, as perhaps you have heard. But the very business (of 
which I spoke, when you entered) had reference to the steps 
he is going to take to make them learn their place.” The 
expression on her face, always stern, deepened into dark 
anger as she said this. Nor did it clear away when Mr. 
Thornton entered the room ; for she saw, in an instant, the 
weight of care and anxiety which he could not shake off, 

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Men and Gentlemen 

although his guests received from him a greeting that 
appeared both cheerful and cordial. He shook hands with 
Margaret. He knew it was the first time their hands had 
met, though she was perfectly unconscious of the fact. He 
inquired after Mrs. Hale, and heard Mr. Hale’s sanguine, 
hopeful account ; and, glancing at Margaret, to understand 
how far she agreed with her father, he saw that no dissent- 
ing shadow crossed her face. And, as he looked with this 
intention, he was struck anew with her great beauty. He 
had never seen her in such dress before ; and yet now it 
appeared as if such elegance of attire was so befitting her 
noble figure and lofty serenity of countenance, that she ought 
to go always thus apparelled. She was talking to Fanny ; 
about what, he could not hear ; but he saw his sister’s rest- 
less way of continually arranging some part of her gown, her 
wandering eyes, now glancing here, now there, but without 
any purpose in her observation ; and he contrasted them 
uneasily with the large soft eyes that looked forth steadily at 
one object, as if from out their light beamed some gentle 
influence of repose; the curving lines of the red lips, just 
parted in the interest of listening to what her companion 
said — the head a little bent forwards, so as to make a long 
sweeping line from the summit, where the light caught 
on the glossy raven hair, to the smooth ivory tip of the 
shoulder ; the round white arms, and taper hands, laid 
lightly across each other, but perfectly motionless in their 
pretty attitude. Mr. Thornton sighed as he took in all this 
with one of his sudden comprehensive glances. And then 
he turned his back to the young ladies, and threw himself, 
with an effort, but with all his heart and soul, into a con- 
versation with Mr. Hale. 

More people came — more and more. Fanny left Mar- 
garet’s side, and helped her mother to receive her guests. 
Mr. Thornton felt that in this influx no one was speaking to 
Margaret, and was restless under this apparent neglect. 
But he never went near her himself ; he did not look at her. 
Only, he knew what she was doing — or not doing — better 

X 9 T 


North nnd South 

than he knew the movements of any one else in the room. 
Margaret was so unconscious of herself, and so much 
amused by watching other people, that she never thought 
whether she was left unnoticed or not. Somebody took her 
down to dinner; she did not catch the name; nor did he 
seem much inclined to talk to her. There was a very 
animated conversation going on among the gentlemen ; the 
ladies, for the most part, were silent, employing themselves 
in taking notes of the dinner and criticising each other’s 
dresses. Margaret caught the clue to the general conversa- 
tion, grew interested, and listened attentively. Mr. Horsfall, 
the stranger, whose visit to the town was the original 
germ of the party, was asking questions relative to the trade 
and manufactures of the place ; and the rest of the gentle- 
men — all Milton men — were giving him answers and 
explanations. Some dispute arose, which was warmly con- 
tested ; it was referred to Mr. Thornton, who had hardly 
spoken before, but who now gave an opinion, the grounds 
of which were so clearly stated that even the opponents 
yielded. Margaret’s attention was thus called to her host ; 
his whole manner, as master of the house, and entertainer of 
his friends, was so straightforward, yet simple and modest, 
as to be thoroughly dignified. Margaret thought she had 
never seen him to so much advantage. When he had come 
to their house, there had been always something, either of 
over eagerness or of that kind of vexed annoyance which 
seemed ready to pre-suppose that he was unjustly judged, 
and yet felt too proud to try and make himself better under- 
stood. But now, among his fellows, there was no uncertainty 
as to his position. He was regarded by them as a man of 
great force of character; of power in many ways. There 
was no need to struggle for their respect. He had it, and 
he knew it ; and the security of this gave a fine grand 
quietness to his voice and ways, which Margaret had missed 
before. 

He was not in the habit of talking to ladies ; and what he 
did say was a little formal. To Margaret herself he hardly 

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Men and Gentlemen 

spoke at all. She was surprised to think how much she 
enjoyed this dinner. She knew enough now to understand 
many local interests — nay, even some of the technical words 
employed by the eager millowners. She silently took a very 
decided part in the question they were discussing. At any 
rate, they talked in desperate earnest — not in the used-up 
style that wearied her so in the old London parties. She 
wondered that, with all this dwelling on the manufactures 
and trade of the place, no allusion was made to the strike 
then pending. She did not yet know how coolly such things 
were taken by the masters, as having only one possible end. 
To be sure, the men were cutting their own throats, as they 
had done many a time before ; but if they would be fools, 
and put themselves into the hands of a rascally set of paid 
delegates, they must take the consequence. One or two 
thought Thornton looked out of spirits ; and, of course, he 
must lose by his turn-out. But it was an accident that might 
happen to themselves any day ; and Thornton was as good 
to manage a strike as any one ; for he was as iron a chap as 
any in Milton. The hands had mistaken their man in trying 
that dodge on him. And they chuckled inwardly at the idea 
of the workmen’s discomfiture and defeat, in their attempt 
to alter one iota of what Thornton had decreed. 

It was rather dull for Margaret after dinner. She was 
glad when the gentlemen came, not merely because she 
caught her father’s eye to brighten her sleepiness up ; but 
because she could listen to something larger and grander 
than the petty interests which the ladies had been talking 
about. She liked the exultation in the sense of power which 
these Milton men had. It might be rather rampant in its 
display, and savour of boasting; but still they seemed to 
defy the old limits of possibility, in a kind of fine intoxica- 
tion, caused by the recollection of what had been achieved, 
and what yet should be. If, in her cooler moments, she 
might not approve of their spirit in all things, still there was 
much to admire in their forgetfulness of themselves and the 
present, in their anticipated triumphs over all inanimate 

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matter at some future time, which none of them should live 
to see. She was rather startled when Mr. Thornton spoke 
to her, close at her elbow — 

“ I could see you were on our side in our discussion at 
dinner, were you not, Miss Hale ? ” 

“ Certainly. But then I know so little about it. I was 
surprised, however, to find from what Mr. Horsfall said, that 
there were others who thought in so diametrically opposite a 
manner, as the Mr. Morison he spoke about. He cannot be 
a gentleman — is he ? ” 

“ I am not quite the person to decide on another’s gentle - 
manliness, Miss Hale. I mean, I don’t quite understand 
your application of the word. But I should say that this 
Morison is no true man. I don’t know who he is ; I merely 
judge him from Mr. Horsfall’s account.” 

“ I suspect my ‘ gentleman ’ includes your ‘ true man.’ ” 

“ And a great deal more, you would imply. I differ from 
you. A man is to me a higher and a completer being than a 
gentleman.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” asked Margaret. “ We must 
understand the words differently.” 

“ I take it that ‘ gentleman ’ is a term that only describes 
a person in his relation to others ; but when we speak of him 
as ‘ a man,’ we consider him not merely with regard to his 
fellow- men, but in relation to himself — to life — to time — to 
eternity. A castaway, lonely as Robinson Crusoe — a prisoner 
immured in a dungeon for life — nay, even a saint in Patmos, 
has his endurance, his strength, his faith, best described by 
being spoken of as ‘ a man.’ I am rather weary of this word 
‘ gentlemanly ’, which seems to me to be often inappropriately 
used, and often, too, with such exaggerated distortion of 
meaning, while the full simplicity of the noun ‘ man,’ and the 
adjective ‘ manly ’, is unacknowledged — that I am induced 
to class it with the cant of the day.” 

Margaret thought a moment — but before she could speak 
her slow conviction, he was called away by some of the eager 
manufacturers, whose speeches she could not hear, though 

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Men and Gentlemen 

she could guess at their import by the short clear answers 
Mr. Thornton gave, which came steady and firm as the boom 
of a distant minute gun. They were evidently talking of the 
turn-out, and suggesting what course had best be pursued. 
She heard Mr. Thornton say — 

“ That has been done.” Then came a hurried murmur, 
in which two or three joined. 

“ All those arrangements have been made.” 

Some doubts were implied, some difficulties named by 
Mr. Slickson, who took hold of Mr. Thornton’s arm, 
the better to impress his words. Mr. Thornton moved 
slightly away, lifted his eyebrows a very little, and then 
replied — 

“ I take the risk. You need not join in it unless you 
choose.” Still some more fears were urged. 

“ I’m not afraid of anything so dastardly as incendiarism. 
We are open enemies ; and I can protect myself from any 
violence that I apprehend. And I will assuredly protect all 
others who come to me for work. They know my deter- 
mination by this time, as well and as fully as you do.” 

Mr. Horsfall took him a little on one side, as Margaret 
conjectured, to ask him some other question about the strike ; 
but in truth, it was to inquire who she herself was — so quiet, 
so stately, and so beautiful.' 

“ A Milton lady ? ” asked he, as the name was given. 

“ No ; from the south of England — Hampshire, I believe,” 
was the cold, indifferent answer. 

Mrs. Slickson was catchising Fanny on the same subject. 

“ Who is that fine, distinguished-looking girl ? a sister of 
Mr. Horsfall’s ? ” 

“ Oh dear, no ! That is Mr. Hale, her father, talking now 
to Mr. Stephens. He gives lessons ; that is to say, he reads 
with young men. My brother John goes to him twice a 
week, and so he begged mamma to ask him here, in hopes 
of getting him known. I believe we have some of their 
prospectuses, if you would like to have one.” 

“ Mr. Thornton ! Does he really find time to read with 
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North and South 

a tutor, in the midst of all his business, — and this abominable 
strike in hand as well ? ” 

Fanny was not sure, from Mrs. Slickson’s manner, 
whether she ought to be proud or ashamed of her brother’s 
conduct ; and, like all people who try and take other people’s 
“ ought ” for the rule of their feelings, she was inclined to 
blush for any singularity of action. Her shame was inter- 
rupted by the dispersion of the guests. 


CHAPTER XXI 

THE DARK NIGHT 

“ On earth is known to none 
The smile that is not sister to a tear.” 

Elliott. 

Margaret and her father walked home. The night was fine, 
the streets clean ; and, with her pretty white silk, like Leezie 
Lindsay’s gown o’ green satin in the ballad, “ kilted up to 
her knee,” she was off with her father — ready to dance along 
with the excitement of the cool, fresh night air. 

“ I rather think Thornton is not quite easy in his mind 
about this strike. He seemed very anxious to-night.” 

“ I should wonder if he were not. But he spoke with his 
usual coolness to the others, when they suggested different 
things, just before we came away.” 

“So he did after dinner as well. It would take a good 
deal to stir him from his cool manner of speaking ; but his 
face strikes me as anxious.” 

“ I should be, if I were he. He must know of the grow- 
ing anger and hardly smothered hatred of his workpeople, 
who all look upon him as what the Bible calls a ‘ hard man,’ 
— not so much unjust as unfeeling ; clear in judgment, stand- 
ing upon his * rights ’ as no human being ought to stand, 

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The Dark Night 

considering what we and all our petty rights are in the sight 
of the Almighty. I am glad you think he looks anxious. 
When I remember Boucher’s half-mad words and ways, I 
cannot bear to think how coolly Mr. Thornton spoke.” 

“ In the first place, I am not so convinced as you are 
about that man Boucher’s utter distress; for the moment, 
he was badly off, I don’t doubt. But there is always a 
mysterious supply of money from these Unions ; and, from 
what you said, it was evident the man was of a passionate, 
demonstrative nature, and gave strong expression to all 
he felt.” 

“ Oh, papa ! ” 

“ Well ! I only want you to do justice to Mr. Thornton, 
who is, I suspect, of an exactly opposite nature — a man who 
is far too proud to show his feelings. Just the character I 
should have thought beforehand you would have admired, 
Margaret.” 

“ So I do — so I should ; but I don’t feel quite so sure as 
you do of the existence of those feelings. He is a man of 
great strength of character — of unusual intellect, considering 
the few advantages he has had.” 

“ Not so few. He has led a practical life from a very 
early age ; has been called upon to exercise judgment and 
self-control. All that develops one part of the intellect. To 
be sure, he needs some of the knowledge of the past, which 
gives the truest basis for conjecture as to the future ; but he 
knows this need — he perceives it, and that is something. 
You are quite prejudiced against Mr. Thornton, Margaret.” 

“ He is the first specimen of a manufacturer — of a person 
engaged in trade — that I had ever the opportunity of studying, 
papa. He is my first olive : let me make a face while I 
swallow it. I know he is good of his kind, and by-and-by 
I shall like the kind. I rather think I am already beginning 
to do so. I was very much interested by what the gentlemen 
were talking about, although I did not understand half of it. 
I was quite sorry when Miss Thornton came to take me to 
the other end of the room, saying she was sure I should be 

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North and South 

uncomfortable at being the only lady among so many gentle- 
men. I had never thought about it, I was so busy listening ; 
and the ladies were so dull, papa — oh, so dull ! Yet I think 
it was clever too. It reminded me of our old game of having 
each so many nouns to introduce into a sentence.” 

“ What do you mean, child? ” asked Mr. Hale. 

“ Why, they took nouns that were signs of things which 
gave evidence of wealth — housekeepers, under- gardeners, 
extent of glass, valuable lace, diamonds, and all such things ; 
and each one formed her speech so as to bring them all in, 
in the prettiest accidental manner possible.” 

“You will be as proud of your one servant when you get 
her, if all is true about her that Mrs. Thornton says.” 

“ To be sure, I shall. I felt like a great hypocrite to-night, 
sitting there in my white silk gown, with my idle hands 
before me, when I remembered all the good, thorough, house- 
work they had done to-day. They took me for a fine lady, 
I’m sure.” 

“ Even I was mistaken enough to think you looked like 
a lady, my dear,” said Mr. Hale, quietly smiling. 

But smiles were changed to white and trembling looks 
when they saw Dixon’s face, as she opened the door. 

“ Oh, master ! — Oh, Miss Margaret ! Thank God you are 
come ! Dr. Donaldson is here. The servant next door went 
for him, for the charwoman is gone home. She’s better now ; 
but, oh sir ! I thought she’d have died an hour ago.” 

Mr. Hale caught Margaret’s arm, to steady himself from 
falling. He looked at her face, and saw an expression upon 
it of surprise and extremest sorrow, but not the agony of 
terror that contracted his own unprepared heart. She knew 
more than he did, and yet she listened with that hopeless 
expression of awed apprehension. 

“ Oh ! I should not have left her — wicked daughter that 
I am ! ” moaned forth Margaret, as she supported her 
trembling father’s hasty steps upstairs. Dr. Donaldson met 
them on the landing. 

“ She is better now,” he whispered. “ The opiate has 

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The Dark Night 

taken effect. The spasms were very bad : no wonder they 
frightened your maid ; but she’ll rally this time.” 

“ This time ! Let me go to her ! ” Half-an-hour ago 
Mr. Hale was a middle-aged man ; now his sight was dim, 
his senses wavering, his walk tottering, as if he were seventy 
years of age. 

Dr. Donaldson took his arm, and led him into the bed- 
room. Margaret followed close. There lay her mother, with 
an unmistakable look on her face. She might be better now ; 
she was sleeping ; but Death had signed her for his own, and 
it was clear that ere long he would return to take possession. 
Mr. Hale looked at her for some time without a word. Then 
he began to shake all over, and, turning away from Dr. 
Donaldson’s anxious care, he groped to find the door; he 
could not see it, although several candles, brought in the 
sudden affright, were burning and flaring there. He staggered 
into the drawing-room, and felt about for a chair. Dr. 
Donaldson wheeled one to him, and placed him in it. He 
felt his pulse. 

“ Speak to him, Miss Hale. We must rouse him.” 

“ Papa ! ” said Margaret, with a crying voice that was 
wild with pain. “ Papa ! speak to me!” The speculation 
came again into his eyes, and he made a great effort. 

“ Margaret, did you know of this ? Oh, it was cruel of 
you ! ” 

“ No, sir, it was not cruel ! ” replied Dr. Donaldson, with 
quick decision. “ Miss Hale acted under my directions. 
There may have been a mistake, but it was not cruel. Your 
wife will be a different creature to-morrow, I trust. She has 
had spasms, as I anticipated, though I did not tell Miss Hale 
of my apprehensions. She has taken the opiate I brought 
with me ; she will have a good long sleep ; and to-morrow 
that look which has alarmed you so much will have passed 
away.” 

“ But not the disease ? ” 

Dr. Donaldson glanced at Margaret. Her bent head, her 
face raised with no appeal for a temporary reprieve, showed 

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North and South 

that quick observer of human nature that she thought it 
better that the whole truth should be told. 

“Not the disease. We cannot touch the disease, with 
all our poor vaunted skill. We can only delay its progress — 
alleviate the pain it causes. Be a man, sir — a Christian. 
Have faith* in the immortality of the soul, which no pain, no 
mortal disease, can assail or touch ! ” 

But all the reply he got was in the choked words, “ You 
have never been married, Dr. Donaldson ; you do not know 
what it is,” and in the deep, manly sobs, which went through 
the stillness of the night like heavy pulses of agony. 

Margaret knelt by him, caressing him with tearful caresses. 
No one, not even Dr. Donaldson, knew how the time went 
by. Mr. Hale was the first to dare to speak of the necessities 
of the present moment. 

“ What must we do ? ” asked he. “ Tell us both. Mar- 
garet is my staff — my right hand.” 

Dr. Donaldson gave his clear, sensible directions. No 
fear for to-night — nay, even peace for to-morrow, and for 
many days yet. But no enduring hope of recovery. He 
advised Mr. Hale to go to bed, and leave only one to watch 
the slumber, which he hoped would be undisturbed. He 
promised to come again early in the morning. And, with a 
warm and kindly shake of the hand, he left them. 

They spoke but few words ; they were too much exhausted 
by their terror to do more than decide upon the immediate 
course of action. Mr. Hale was resolved to sit up through 
the night, and all that Margaret could do was to prevail upon 
him to rest on the drawing-room sofa. Dixon stoutly and 
bluntly refused to go to bed ; and, as for Margaret, it was 
simply impossible that she should leave her mother, let all 
the doctors in the world speak of “ husbanding resources,” 
and “ one watcher only being required.” So, Dixon sat, and 
stared, and winked, and drooped, and picked herself up again 
with a jerk, and finally gave up the battle, and fairly snored. 
Margaret had taken off her gown and tossed it aside with a 
sort of impatient disgust, and put on her dressing-gown. 

200 


The Dark Night 

She felt as if she never could sleep again ; as if her whole 
senses were acutely vital, and all endued with double keen- 
ness, for the purposes of watching. Every sight and sound 
— nay, even every thought, touched some nerve to the very 
quick. For more than two hours, she heard her father’s 
restless movements in the next room. He came perpetually 
to the door of her mother’s chamber, pausing there to listen, 
till she, not hearing his close unseen presence, went and 
opened it to tell him how all went on, in reply to the 
questions his baked lips could hardly form. At last he, too, 
fell asleep, and all the house was still. Margaret sate behind 
the curtain, thinking. Far away in time, far away in space, 
seemed all the interests of past days. Not more than thirty- 
six hours ago, she cared for Bessy Higgins and her father, 
and her heart was wrung for Boucher; now, that was all 
like a dreaming memory of some former life ; — everything 
that had passed out of doors seemed dissevered from her 
mother, and therefore unreal. Even Harley Street appeared 
more distinct ; there she remembered, as if it were yesterday, 
how she had pleased herself with tracing out her mother’s 
features in her Aunt Shaw’s face — and how letters had come, 
making her dwell on the thoughts of home with all the 
longing of love. Helstone, itself, was in the dim past. The 
dull grey days of the preceding winter and spring, so un- 
eventless and monotonous, seemed more associated with 
what she cared for now above all price. She would fain 
have caught at the skirts of that departing time, and prayed 
it to return, and give her back what she had too little valued 
while it was yet in her possession. What a vain show Life 
seemed ! How unsubstantial, and flickering, and flitting ! 
It was as if from some aerial belfry, high up above the stir 
and jar of the earth, there was a bell continually tolling, 
“ All are shadows ! — all are passing ! — all is past ! ” And 
when the morning dawned, cool and grey, like many a 
happier morning before — when Margaret looked one by one 
at the sleepers, it seemed as if the terrible night were unreal 
as a dream ; it, too, was a shadow. It, too, was past. 

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North and South 

Mrs. Hale herself was not aware, when she awoke, how 
ill she had been the night before. She was rather surprised 
at Dr. Donaldson’s early visit, and perplexed by the anxious 
faces of husband and child. She consented to remain in bed 
that day, saying she certainly was tired ; but, the next, she 
insisted on getting up ; and Dr. Donaldson gave his consent 
to her returning into the drawing-room. She was restless 
and uncomfortable in every position, and before night she 
became very feverish. Mr. Hale was utterly listless, and 
incapable of deciding on anything. 

“ What can we do to spare mamma such another night ? ” 
asked Margaret on the third day. 

“ It is, to a certain degree, the reaction after the powerful 
opiates I have been obliged to use. It is more painful for 
you to see than for her to bear, I believe. But, I think, if 
we could get a water-bed it might be a good thing. Not but 
what she will be better to-morrow ; pretty much like herself 
as she was before this attack. Still, I should like her to have 
a water-bed. Mrs. Thornton has one, I know. I’ll try and 
call there this afternoon. Stay,” said he, his eye catching on 
Margaret’s face, blanched with watching in a sick room, 
“ I’m not sure whether I can go ; I’ve a long round to take. 
It would do you no harm to have a brisk walk to Marlborough 
Street, and ask Mrs. Thornton if she can spare it.” 

“ Certainly,” said Margaret. “ I could go while mamma 
is asleep this afternoon. I’m sure Mrs. Thornton would lend 
it to us.” 

Dr. Donaldson’s experience told him rightly. Mrs. Hale 
seemed to shake off the consequences of her attack, and 
looked brighter and better this afternoon than Margaret had 
ever hoped to see her again. Her daughter left her after 
dinner, sitting in her easy chair, with her hand lying in her 
husband’s, who looked more worn and suffering than she by 
far. Still, he could smile now — rather slowly, rather faintly, 
it is true ; but, a day or two before, Margaret never thought 
to see him smile again. 

It was about two miles from their house in Crampton 


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The Dark Night 

Crescent to Marlborough Street. It was too hot to walk 
very quickly. An August sun beat straight down into the 
street at three o’clock in the afternoon. Margaret went 
along, without noticing anything very different from usual 
in the first mile and a half of her journey ; she was absorbed 
in her own thoughts, and had learnt by this time to thread 
her way through the irregular stream of human beings 
that flowed through Milton streets. But, by-and-by, she 
was struck with an unusual heaving among the mass of 
people in the crowded road on which she was entering. 
They did not appear to be moving on, so much as talking, 
and listening, and buzzing with excitement, without much 
stirring from the spot where they might happen to be. Still, 
as they made way for her, and wrapt up in the purpose of 
her errand, and the necessities that suggested it, she was 
less quick of observation than she might have been, if her 
mind had been at ease. She had got into Marlborough 
Street before the full conviction forced itself upon her, that 
there was a restless, oppressive sense of irritation abroad 
among the people ; a thunderous atmosphere, morally as 
well as physically, around her. From every narrow lane 
opening out on Marlborough Street came up a low distant 
roar, as of myriads of fierce indignant voices. The 
inhabitants of each poor squalid dwelling were gathered 
round the doors and windows, if indeed they were not 
actually standing in the middle of the narrow ways — all with 
looks intent towards one point. Marlborough Street itself 
was the focus of all those human eyes, that betrayed intensest 
interest of various kinds : some fierce with anger, some 
lowering with relentless threats, some dilated with fear, or 
imploring entreaty ; and, as Margaret reached the small side- 
entrance by the folding doors, in the great dead wall of 
Marlborough mill-yard, and waited the porter’s answer to 
the bell, she looked round and heard the first long far-off 
roll of the tempest ; — saw the first slow- surging wave of the 
dark crowd come, with its threatening crest, tumble over, 
and retreat, at the far end of the street, which a moment ago 

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North and South 

seemed so full of repressed noise, but which now was 
ominously still ; all these circumstances forced themselves 
on Margaret’s notice, but did not sink down into her pre- 
occupied heart. She did not know what they meant — what 
was their deep significance ; while she did know, did feel the 
keen sharp pressure of the knife that was soon to stab her 
through and through by leaving her motherless. She was 
trying to realise that, in order that, when it came, she might 
be ready to comfort her father. 

The porter opened the door cautiously, not nearly wide 
enough to admit her. 

“ It’s you, is it, ma’am ? ” said he, drawing a long breath, 
and widening the entrance, but still not opening it fully. 
Margaret went in. He hastily bolted it behind her. 

“ Th’ folk are all coming up here, I reckon ? ” asked he. 

“ I don’t know. Something unusual seemed going on ; 
but this street is quite empty, I think.” 

She went across the yard and up the steps to the house 
door. There was no near sound — no steam-engine at work 
with beat and pant — no click of machinery, no mingling and 
clashing of many sharp voices ; but, far away, the ominous 
gathering roar, deep -clamouring 


CHAPTEB XXII 

A BLOW AND ITS CONSEQUENCES 

“ But work grew scarce, while bread grew dear, 

And wages lessened, too ; 

For Irish hordes were bidders here, 

Our half-paid work to do.” 

Corn Law Rhymes. 

Margaret was shown into the drawing-room. It had 
returned into its normal state of bag and covering. The 
windows were half open because of the heat, and the 

204 


A Blow and its Consequences 

Venetian blinds covered the glass — so that a grey grim light, 
reflected from the pavement below, threw all the shadows 
wrong, and combined with the green-tinged upper light to 
make even Margaret’s own face, as she caught it in the 
mirrors, look ghastly and wan. She sat and waited ; no one 
came. Every now and then, the wind seemed to bear the 
distant multitudinous sound nearer; and yet there was no 
wind ! It died away into profound stillness between whiles. 

Fanny came in at last. 

“ Mamma will come directly, Miss Hale. She desired 
me to apologise to you as it is. Perhaps you know my 
brother has imported hands from Ireland, and it has irritated 
the Milton people excessively — as if he hadn’t a right to get 
labour where he could ; and the stupid wretches here wouldn’t 
work for him ; and now they’ve frightened these poor Irish 
starvelings so with their threats, that we daren’t let them 
out. You may see them huddled in that top room in the 
mill — and they’re to sleep there, to keep them safe from 
those brutes, who will neither work nor let them work. 
And mamma is seeing about their food, and John is speaking 
to them, for some of the women are crying to go back. Ah ! 
here’s mamma ! ” 

Mrs. Thornton came in with a look of black sternness on 
her face, which made Margaret feel she had arrived at a bad 
time to trouble her with her request. However, it was only 
in compliance with Mrs. Thornton’s expressed desire, that 
she would ask for whatever they might want in the progress 
of her mother’s illness. Mrs. Thornton’s brow contracted, 
and her mouth grew set, while Margaret spoke with gentle 
modesty of her mother’s restlessness, and Dr. Donaldson’s 
wish that she should have the relief of a water-bed. She 
ceased. Mrs. Thornton did not reply immediately. Then 
she started up and exclaimed — 

“ They’re at the gates ! Call John, Fanny — call him in 
from the mill ! They’re at the gates ! They’ll batter them 
in ! Call John, I say ! ” 

And simultaneously, the gathering tramp — to which she 
205 


North and South 

had been listening, instead of heeding Margaret’s words — 
was heard just right outside the wall, and an increasing din 
of angry voices raged behind the wooden barrier, which 
shook as if the unseen maddened crowd made battering rams 
of their bodies, and retreated a short space, only to come 
with more united steady impetus against it, till their great 
beats made the strong gates quiver, like reeds before the 
wind. 

The women gathered round the windows, fascinated to 
look on the scene which terrified them. Mrs. Thornton, 
the women- servants, Margaret — all were there. Fanny had 
returned, screaming, upstairs as if pursued at every step, and 
had thrown herself in hysterical sobbing on the sofa. Mrs. 
Thornton watched for her son, who was still in the mill. 
He came out, looked up at them — the pale cluster of faces 
— and smiled good courage to them, before he locked the 
factory door. Then he called to one of the women to come 
down and undo his own door, which Fanny had fastened 
behind her in her mad flight. Mrs. Thornton herself went. 
The sound of his well-known and commanding voice seemed 
to have been like the taste of blood to the infuriated 
multitude outside. Hitherto they had been voiceless, word- 
less, needing all their breath for their hard-laboured efforts 
to break down the gates. But now, hearing him speak 
inside, they set up such a fierce, unearthly groan, that even 
Mrs. Thornton was white with fear as she preceded him 
into the room. He came in a little flushed, but his eyes 
gleamed, as in answer to the trumpet-call of danger, and 
with a proud look of defiance on his face, that made him 
a noble, if not a handsome, man. Margaret had always 
dreaded lest her courage should fail her in any emergency, 
and she should be proved to be, what she dreaded lest she 
was — a coward. But now, in this real great time of reason- 
able fear and nearness of terror, she forgot herself, and felt 
only an intense sympathy — intense to painfulness — in the 
interests of the moment. 

Mr. Thornton came frankly forwards — 

206 


A Blow and its Consequences 

“ I’m sorry, Miss Hale, you have visited us at this un- 
fortunate moment, when, I fear, you may be involved in 
whatever risk we have to bear. Mother ! hadn’t you better go 
into the back rooms ? I’m not sure whether they may not 
have made their way from Pinner’s Lane into the stable- 
yard ; but, if not, you will be safer there than here. Go, 
Jane ! ” continued he, addressing the upper-servant. And 
she went, followed by the others. 

“ I stop here ! ” said his mother. “ Where you are, there I 
stay.” And indeed, retreat into the back rooms was of no 
avail ; the crowd had surrounded the outbuildings at the rear, 
and were sending forth their awful threatening roar behind. 
The servants retreated into the garrets, with many a cry 
and shriek. Mr. Thornton smiled scornfully as he heard 
them. He glanced at Margaret, standing all by herself at 
the window nearest the factory. Her eyes glittered, her 
colour was deepened on cheek and lip. As if she felt his 
look, she turned to him and asked a question that had been 
for some time in her mind — 

“ Where are the poor imported workpeople ? In the 
factory there ? ” 

“ Yes ! I left them cowed up in a small room, at the 
head of a back flight of stairs; bidding them run all 
risks, and escape down there, if they heard any attack 
made on the mill doors. But it is not them — it is me 
they want.” 

“ When can the soldiers be here ? ” asked his mother, in 
a low but not unsteady voice. 

He took out his watch with the same steady composure 
with which he did everything. He made some little 
calculation — 

“ Supposing Williams got straight off when I told him, 
and hadn’t to dodge about amongst them — it must be 
twenty minutes yet.” 

“ Twenty minutes ! ” said his mother, for the first time 
showing her terror in the tones of her voice. 

“ Shut down the windows instantly, mother,” exclaimed 
207 


North and South 

he ; “ the gates won’t bear such another shock. Shut down 
that window, Miss Hale.” 

Margaret shut down her window, and then went to assist 
Mrs. Thornton’s trembling fingers. 

From some cause or other, there was a pause of several 
minutes in the unseen street. Mrs. Thornton looked with 
wild anxiety at her son’s countenance, as if to gain the 
interpretation of the sudden stillness from him. His face 
was set into rigid lines of contemptuous defiance; neither 
hope nor fear could be read there. 

Fanny raised herself up — 

“ Are they gone ? ” asked she in a whisper. 

“ Gone ! ” replied he. “ Listen ! ” 

She did listen ; they all could hear the one great straining 
breath ; the creak of wood slowly yielding ; the wrench of 
iron ; the mighty fall of the ponderous gates. Fanny stood 
up tottering — made a step or two towards her mother, and 
fell forwards into her arms in a fainting fit. Mrs. Thornton 
lifted her up with a strength that was as much that of the 
will as of the body, and carried her away. 

“ Thank God ! ” said Mr. Thornton, as he watched her 
out. “ Had you not better go upstairs, Miss Hale ? ” 

Margaret’s lips formed a “ No ! ” — but he could not hear 
her speak, for the tramp of innumerable steps right under 
the very wall of the house, and the fierce growl of low deep 
angry voices that had a ferocious murmur of satisfaction 
in them, more dreadful than their baffled cries not many 
minutes before. 

“ Never mind ! ” said he, thinking to encourage her. 
“ I am very sorry that you should have been entrapped into 
all this alarm ; but it cannot last long now ; a few minutes 
more, and the soldiers will be here.” 

“ Oh, God ! ” cried Margaret suddenly ; “ there is Boucher. 
I know his face, though he is livid with rage — he is fighting 
to get to the front — look ! look ! ” 

“ Who is Boucher ? ” asked Mr. Thornton coolly, and 
coming close to the window to discover the man in whom 

208 


A Blow and its Consequences 

Margaret took such an interest. As soon as they saw 
Mr. Thornton, they set up a yell, — to call it not human is 
nothing, — it was as the demoniac desire of some terrible 
wild beast for the food that is withheld from his ravening. 
Even he drew back for a moment, dismayed at the intensity 
of hatred he had provoked. 

“ Let them yell ! ” said he. “ In five minutes more 

I only hope my poor Irishmen are not terrified out of their 
wits by such a fiend-like noise. Keep up your courage for 
five minutes, Miss Hale.” 

“ Don’t be afraid for me,” she said hastily. “ But what 
in five minutes ! Can you do nothing to soothe these poor 
creatures ? It is awful to see them.” 

“ The soldiers will be here directly, and that will bring 
them to reason.” 

“ To reason ! ” said Margaret quickly. “ What kind of 
reason ? ” 

“ The only reason that does with men that make them- 
selves into wild beasts. By heaven ! they’ve turned to the 
mill-door ! ” 

“ Mr. Thornton,” said Margaret, shaking all over with 
her passion, “ go down this instant, if you are not a coward. 
Go down and face them like a man. Save these poor 
strangers whom you have decoyed here. Speak to your 
workmen as if they were human beings. Speak to them 
kindly. Don’t let the soldiers come in and cut down poor 
creatures who are driven mad. I see one there who is. If 
you have any courage or noble quality in you, go out and 
speak to them, man to man ! ” 

He turned and looked at her while she spoke. A dark 
cloud came over his face while he listened. He set his teeth 
as he heard her words. 

“ I will go. Perhaps I may ask you to accompany me 
downstairs, and bar the door behind me ; my mother and 
sister will need that protection.” 

“ Oh ! Mr. Thornton ! I do not know— I may be wrong 

— only ” 


209 


P 


North and South 

But he was gone ; he was downstairs in the hall ; he had 
unbarred the front door ; all she could do was to follow him 
quickly, and fasten it behind him, and clamber up the stairs 
again with a sick heart and a dizzy head. Again she took 
her place by the farthest window. He was on the steps 
below ; she saw that by the direction of a thousand angry 
eyes ; but she could neither see nor hear anything save the 
savage satisfaction of the rolling angry murmur. She threw 
the window wide open. Many in the crowd were mere boys ; 
cruel and thoughtless — cruel because they were thoughtless ; 
some were men, gaunt as wolves, and mad for prey. She 
knew how it was ; they were like Boucher — with starving 
children at home — relying on ultimate success in their efforts 
to get higher wages, and enraged beyond measure at dis- 
covering that Irishmen were to be brought in to rob their 
little ones of bread. Margaret knew it all; she read it in 
Boucher’s face, forlornly desperate and livid with rage. If 
Mr. Thornton would but say something to them — let them 
hear his voice only — it seemed as if it would be better than 
this wild beating and raging against the stony silence that 
vouchsafed them no word, even of anger or reproach. But 
perhaps he was speaking now ; there was a momentary hush 
of their noise, inarticulate as that of a troop of animals. She 
tore her bonnet off, and bent forwards to hear. She could 
only see ; for, if Mr. Thornton had indeed made the attempt 
to speak, the momentary instinct to listen to him was past 
and gone, and the people were raging worse than ever. He 
stood with his arms folded ; still as a statue ; his face pale 
with repressed excitement. They were trying to intimidate 
him — to make him flinch ; each was urging the other on to 
some immediate act of personal violence. Margaret felt 
intuitively, that, in an instant, all would be uproar— that the 
first touch would cause an explosion, in which, among such 
hundreds of infuriated men and reckless boys, even Mr. 
Thornton’s life would be unsafe — that, in another instant, 
the stormy passions would have passed their bounds, and 
swept away all barriers of reason, or apprehension of 

210 


A Blow and its Consequences 

consequence. Even while she looked, she saw lads in the 
background stooping to take off their heavy wooden clogs — 
the readiest missile they could find ; she saw it was the spark 
to the gunpowder, and with a cry, which no one heard, she 
rushed out of the room, downstairs — she had lifted the great 
iron bar of the door with an imperious force — had thrown 
the door open wide — and was there, in face of that angry 
sea of men, her eyes smiting them with flaming arrows of 
reproach. The clogs were arrested in the hands that held 
them— the countenances, so fell not a moment before, now 
looked irresolute, and as if asking what this meant. For 
she stood between them and their enemy. She could not 
speak, but held out her arms towards them till she could 
recover breath. 

“ Oh, do not use violence ! He is one man and you are 
many ” ; but her words died away, for there was no tone in 
her voice ; it was but a hoarse whisper. Mr. Thornton stood 
a little on one side ; he had moved away from behind her, 
as if jealous of anything that should come between him and 
danger. 

“ Go ! ” said she, once more (and now her voice was 
like a cry). “ The soldiers are sent for — are coming. Go 
peaceably. Go away. You shall have relief from your 
complaints, whatever they are.” 

“ Shall them Irish blackguards be packed back again ? ” 
asked one from out the crowd, with fierce threatening in his 
voice. 

“ Never, for your bidding ! ” exclaimed Mr. Thornton. 
And instantly the storm broke. The hootings rose and filled 
the air — but Margaret did not hear them. Her eye was on 
the group of lads who had armed themselves with their clogs 
some time before. She saw their gesture — she knew its 
meaning — she read their aim. Another moment, and Mr. 
Thornton might be smitten down — he whom she had urged 
and goaded to come to this perilous place. She only 
thought how she could save him. She threw her arms 
around him; she made her body into a shield from the 


2 1 1 


North and South 

fierce people beyond. Still, with his arms folded, he shook 
her off. 

“ Go away,” said he, in his deep voice. “ This is no 
place for you.” 

“ It is,” said she. “ You did not see what I saw.” If 
she thought her sex would be a protection — if, with shrink- 
ing eyes, she had turned away from the terrible anger of 
these men, in any hope that ere she looked again they would 
have paused and reflected, and slunk away, and vanished — 
she was wrong. Their reckless passion had carried them 
too far to stop — at least had carried some of them too far ; 
for it is always the savage lads, with their love of cruel 
excitement, who head the riot — reckless to what bloodshed 
it may lead. A clog whizzed through the air. Margaret’s 
fascinated eyes watched its progress ; it missed its aim, and 
she turned sick with affright, but changed not her position, 
only hid her face on Mr. Thornton’s arm. Then she turned 
and spoke again — 

“ For God’s sake ! do not damage your cause by this 
violence. You do not know what you are doing.” She 
strove to make her words distinct. 

A sharp pebble flew by her, grazing forehead and cheek, 
and drawing a blinding sheet of light before her eyes. She 
lay like one dead on Mr. Thornton’s shoulder. Then he 
unfolded his arms, and held her encircled in one for an 
instant — 

“ You do well I ” said he. “ You come to oust the inno- 
cent stranger. You fall — you hundreds — on one man ; and 
when a woman comes before you, to ask you for your own 
sakes to be reasonable creatures, your cowardly wrath falls 
upon her ! You do well ! ” They were silent while he 
spoke. They were watching, open-eyed, and open-mouthed, 
the thread of dark-red blood which wakened them up 
from their trance of passion. Those nearest the gate 
stole out ashamed ; there was a movement through all 
the crowd — a retreating movement. Only one voice cried 
out — 


212 


A Blow and its Consequences 

“ TV stone were meant for thee ; but thou wert sheltered 
behind a woman ! ” 

Mr. Thornton quivered with rage. The blood-flowing 
had made Margaret conscious — dimly, vaguely conscious. 
He placed her gently on the door-step, her head leaning 
against the frame. 

“ Can you rest there ? ” he asked. But without waiting 
for her answer, he went slowly down the steps right into the 
middle of the crowd. “ Now kill me, if it is your brutal will. 
There is no woman to shield me here. You may beat me 
to death — you will never move me from what I have deter- 
mined upon — not you.” He stood amongst them, with his 
arms folded, in precisely the same attitude as he had been 
in on the steps. 

But the retrograde movement towards the gate had 
begun — as unreasoningly, perhaps as blindly, as the simul- 
taneous anger. Or, perhaps, the idea of the approach of 
the soldiers, and the sight of that pale, upturned face, with 
closed eyes, still and sad as marble, though the tears welled 
out of the long entanglement of eyelashes, and dropped 
down ; and, heavier, slower plash than even tears, came 
the drip of blood from her wound. Even the most desperate 
— Boucher himself — drew back, faltered away, scowled, and 
finally went off, muttering curses on the master, who stood 
in his unchanging attitude, looking after their retreat with 
defiant eyes. The moment that retreat had changed into 
a flight (as it was sure from its very character to do), he 
darted up the steps to Margaret. 

She tried to rise without his help. 

“It is nothing,” she said, with a sickly smile. “ The 
skin is grazed, and I was stunned at the moment. Oh, 
I am so thankful they are gone ! ” And she cried without 
restraint. 

He could not sympathise with her. His anger had not 
abated; it was rather rising the more as his sense of im- 
mediate danger was passing away. The distant clank of 
the soldiers was heard : just five minutes too late to make 

213 


North and South 

this vanished mob feel the power of authority and order. 
He hoped they would see the troops, and be quelled by 
the thought of their narrow escape. While these thoughts 
crossed his mind, Margaret clung to the doorpost to steady 
herself; but a film came over her eyes — he was only just 
in time to catch her. “ Mother — mother ! ” cried he ; “ come 
down — they are gone, and Miss Hale is hurt ! ” He bore 
her into the dining-room, and laid her on the sofa there ; 
laid her down softly, and, looking on her pure white face, 
the sense of what she was to him came to him so keenly 
that he spoke it out in his pain — 

“ Oh, my Margaret — my Margaret ! no one can tell 
what you are to me ! Dead — cold as you lie there, you 
are the only woman I ever loved ! Oh, Margaret — 
Margaret ! ” 

Inarticulately as he spoke, kneeling by her, and rather 
moaning than saying the words, he started up, ashamed of 
himself, as his mother came in. She saw nothing, but her 
son a little paler, a little sterner than usual. 

“ Miss Hale is hurt, mother. A stone has grazed her 
temple. She has lost a good deal of blood, I’m afraid.” 

“ She looks very seriously hurt, — I could almost fancy 
her dead,” said Mrs. Thornton, a good deal alarmed. 

“It is only a fainting-fit. She has spoken to me 
since.” But all the blood in his body seemed to rush 
inwards to his heart as he spoke, and he absolutely 
trembled. 

“ Go and call Jane — she can find me the things I want ; 
and do you go to your Irish people, who are crying and 
shouting as if they were mad with fright.” 

He went. He went away as if weights were tied to 
every limb that bore him from her. He called Jane; he 
called his sister. She should have all womanly care, all 
gentle tendance. But every pulse beat in him as he re- 
membered how she had come down and placed herself in 
foremost danger — could it be to save him? At the time, 
he had pushed her aside, and spoken gruffly; he had seen 

214 


A Blow and its Consequences 

nothing but the unnecessary danger she had placed herself 
in. He went to his Irish people, with every nerve in his 
body thrilling at the thought of her, and found it difficult 
to understand enough of what they were saying to soothe 
and comfort away their fears. There, they declared, they 
would not stop ; they claimed to be sent back. 

And so he had to think, and talk, and reason. 

Mrs. Thornton bathed Margaret’s temples with eau-de- 
Cologne. As the spirit touched the wound, which till then 
neither Mrs. Thornton nor Jane had perceived, Margaret 
opened her eyes ; but it was evident she did not know where 
she was, nor who they were. The dark circles deepened, 
the lips quivered and contracted, and she became insensible 
once more. 

“ She has had a terrible blow,” said Mrs. Thornton. 
“ Is there any one who will go for a doctor ? ” 

“Not me, ma’am, if you please,” said Jane, shrinking 
back. “Them rabble may be all about; I don’t think the 
cut is so deep, ma’am, as it looks.” 

“ I will not run the chance. She was hurt in our house. 
If you are a coward, Jane, I am not. I will go.” 

“ Pray, ma’am, let me send one of the police. There’s 
ever so many come up, and soldiers too.” 

“And yet you’re afraid to go! I will not have their 
time taken up with our errands. They’ll have enough to 
do to catch some of the mob. You will not be afraid to 
stop in this house,” she asked contemptuously, “and go 
on bathing Miss Hale’s forehead, shall you ? I shall not 
be ten minutes away.” 

“ Couldn’t Hannah go, ma’am ? ” 

“Why Hannah? Why any but you? No, Jane, if 
you don’t go, I do.” 

Mrs. Thornton went first to the room in which she had 
left Fanny stretched on the bed. She started up as her 
mother entered. 

“Oh, mamma, how you terrified me ! I thought you 
were a man that had got into the house.” 

215 


North and South 

“ Nonsense ! The men are all gone away. There are 
soldiers all round the place, seeking for their work now it 
is too late. Miss Hale is lying on the dining-room sofa 
badly hurt. I am going for the doctor.” 

“ Oh ! don’t, mamma ! they’ll murder you.” She clung 
to her mother’s gown. Mrs. Thornton wrenched it away 
with no gentle hand. 

“ Find me some one else to go ; but that girl must not 
bleed to death.” 

“ Bleed ! oh, how horrid ! How has she got hurt ? ” 

“ I don’t know — I have no time to ask. Go down to 
her, Fanny, and do try and make yourself of use. Jane 
is with her; and I trust it looks worse than it is! Jane 
has refused to leave the house, cowardly woman! And I 
won’t put myself in the way of any more refusals from 
my servants, so I am going myself.” 

“ Oh, dear, dear ! ” said Fanny, crying, and preparing 
to go down rather than be left alone, with the thought of 
wounds and bloodshed in the very house. 

“ Oh, Jane ! ” said she, creeping into the dining-room, 
“ what is the matter ? How white she looks ! How did 
she get hurt? Did they throw stones into the drawing- 
room ? ” 

Margaret did indeed look white and wan, although her 
senses were beginning to return to her. But the sickly 
daze of the swoon made her still miserably faint. She 
was conscious of movement around her, and of refreshment 
from the eau-de-Cologne, and a craving for the bathing to 
go on without intermission ; but when they stopped to 
talk, she could no more have opened her eyes, or spoken 
to ask for more bathing, than the people who lie in death- 
like trance can move, or utter sound, to arrest the awful 
preparations for their burial, while they are yet fully aware, 
not merely of the actions of those around them, but of the 
idea that is the motive for such actions. 

Jane paused in her bathing, to reply to Miss Thornton’s 
question. 


216 


A Blow and its Consequences 

“ She’d have been safe enough, miss, if she’d stayed in 
the drawing-room, or come up to us ; we were in the front 
garret, and could see it all, out of harm’s way.” 

“ Where was she then ? ” said Fanny, drawing nearer 
by slow degrees, as she became accustomed to the sight of 
Margaret’s pale face. 

“ Just before the front door — with master ! ” said Jane 
significantly. 

“ With John ! with my brother ! How did she get 
there ? ” 

“ Nay, miss, that’s not for me to say,” answered Jane, 
with a slight toss of her head. “ Sarah did ” 

“ Sarah what ? ” said Fanny with impatient curiosity. 

Jane resumed her bathing, as if what Sarah did or said 
was not exactly the thing she liked to repeat. 

“Sarah what?” asked Fanny sharply. “Don’t speak 
in these half sentences, or I can’t understand you.” 

“ Well, miss, since you will have it — Sarah, you see, 
was in the best place for seeing, being at the right-hand 
window ; and she says, and said at the very time too, that 
she saw Miss Hale with her arms about master’s neck, 
hugging him before all the people.” 

“ I don’t believe it,” said Fanny. “ I know she cares 
for my brother; any one can see that; and I dare say 
she’d give her eyes if he’d marry her — which he never 
will, I can tell her. But I don’t believe she’d be so bold 
and forward as to put her arms round his neck.” 

“ Poor young lady ! she’s paid for it dearly if she did. 
It’s my belief, that the blow has given her such an ascend- 
ancy of blood to the head as she’ll never get the better 
from. She looks like a corpse now.” 

“Oh, I wish mamma could come ! ” said Fanny, wring- 
ing her hands. “ I never was in the room with a dead 
person before.” 

“ Stay, miss ! She’s not dead : her eyelids are quivering, 
and here’s wet tears a-coming down her cheeks. Speak 
to her, Miss Fanny ! ” 


217 


North and South 

“ Are yon better now ? ” asked Fanny, in a quavering 
voice. 

No answer ; no sign of recognition ; but a faint pink 
colour returned to her lips, although the rest of her face was 
ashen pale. 

Mrs. Thornton came hurriedly in, with the nearest 
surgeon she could find. 

“ How is she ? Are you better, my dear ? ” as Margaret 
opened her filmy eyes, and gazed dreamily at her. “ Here 
is Mr. Lowe come to see you.” 

Mrs. Thornton spoke loudly and distinctly, as to a deaf 
person. Margaret tried to rise, and drew her ruffled, luxuriant 
hair instinctively over the cut. 

“ I am better now,” said she, in a very low, faint voice. 
“ I was a little sick.” 

She let him take her hand and feel her pulse. The bright 
colour came for a moment into her face, when he asked to 
examine the wound in her forehead ; and she glanced up at 
Jane, as if shrinking from her inspection more than from the 
doctor’s. 

“ It is not much, I think. I am better now. I must go 
home.” 

“Not until I have applied some strips of plaster, and you 
have rested a little.” 

She sat down hastily, without another word, and allowed 
it to be bound up. 

“ Now, if you please,” said she, “ I must go. Mamma 
will not see it, I think. It is under the hair, is it not ? ” 

“ Quite ; no one could tell.” 

“ But you must not go,” said Mrs. Thornton impatiently. 
“ You are not fit to go.” 

“ I must,” said Margaret decidedly. “ Think of mamma. 

If they should hear Besides, I must go,” said she 

vehemently. “ I cannot stay here. May I ask for a 
cab?” 

“ You are quite flushed and feverish,” observed Mr. 
Lowe. 


218 


A Blow and its Consequences 

“ It is only with being here, when I do so want to go. 
The air — getting away, would do me more good than any- 
thing,” pleaded she. 

“ I really believe it is as she says,” Mr. Lowe replied. 
“ If her mother is so ill as you told me on the way here, it 
may be very serious if she hears of this riot, and does not see 
her daughter back at the time she expects. The injury is 
not deep. I will fetch a cab, if your servants are still afraid 
to go out.” 

“ Oh, thank you ! ” said Margaret. “ It will do me more 
good than anything. It is the air of this room that makes 
me feel so miserable.” 

She leant back on the sofa, and closed her eyes. Fanny 
beckoned her mother out of the room, and told her some- 
thing that made her equally anxious with Margaret for the 
departure of the latter. Not that she fully believed Fanny’s 
statement ; but she credited enough to make her manner to 
Margaret appear very much constrained, at wishing her 
good-bye. 

Mr. Lowe returned in the cab. 

“ If you will allow me, I will see you home, Miss Hale. 
The streets are not very quiet yet.” 

Margaret’s thoughts were quite alive enough to the 
present to make her desirous of getting rid of both Mr. Lowe 
and the cab before she reached Orampton Crescent, for fear 
of alarming her father and mother. Beyond that one aim 
she would not look. That ugly dream of insolent words 
spoken about herself, could never be forgotten — but could be 
put aside till she was stronger — for, oh ! she was very weak ; 
and her mind sought for some present fact to steady itself 
upon, and keep it from utterly losing consciousness in 
another hideous sickly swoon. 


219 


North and South 


CHAPTER XXIII 

MISTAKES 

“ Which when his mother saw, she in her mind 
Was troubled sore, ne wist well what to ween.” 

Spenseb. 

Margaret had not been gone five minutes when Mr. 
Thornton came in, his face all a-glow. 

“ I could not come sooner : the superintendent would 

Where is she ? ” He looked round the dining-room, and 
then almost fiercely at his mother, who was quietly re- 
arranging the disturbed furniture, and did not instantly reply. 
“ Where is Miss Hale ? ” asked he again, 

“ Gone home,” said she, rather shortly. 

“ Gone home ! ” 

“ Yes. She was a great deal better. Indeed, I don’t 
believe it was so very much of a hurt ; only some people 
faint at the least thing.” 

“ I am sorry she is gone home,” said he, walking uneasily 
about. “ She could not have been fit for it.” 

“ She said she was ; and Mr. Lowe said she was. I went 
for him myself.” 

“ Thank you, mother.” He stopped, and partly held out 
his hand to give her a grateful shake. But she did not 
notice the movement. 

“ What have you done with your Irish people ? ” 

“ Sent to the Dragon for a good meal for them, poor 
wretches. And then, luckily, I caught Father Grady, and 
I’ve asked him in to speak to them, and dissuade them from 
going off in a body. How did Miss Hale go home ? I’m 
sure she could not walk.” 

“ She had a cab. Everything was done properly, even to 
the paying. Let us talk of something else. She has caused 
disturbance enough.” 


220 


Mistakes 

“ I don’t know where I should have been but for her/’ 

“ Are you become so helpless as to have to be defended 
by a girl ? ” asked Mrs. Thornton scornfully. 

He reddened. “ Not many girls would have taken the 
blows on herself which were meant for me; — meant with 
right down goodwill, too.” 

“ A girl in love will do a good deal,” replied Mrs. Thornton 
shortly. 

“ Mother ! ” He made a step forwards ; stood still ; 
heaved with passion. 

She was a little startled at the evident force he used to 
keep himself calm. She was not sure of the nature of the 
emotions she had provoked. It was only their violence that 
was clear. Was it anger ? His eyes glowed, his figure was 
dilated, his breath came thick and fast. It was a mixture of 
joy, of anger, of pride, of glad surprise, of panting doubt ; 
but she could not read it. Still it made her uneasy — as the 
presence of all strong feeling, of which the cause is not fully 
understood or sympathised in, always has this effect. She 
went to the side-board, opened a drawer, and took out a 
duster, which she kept there for any occasional purpose. 
She had seen a drop of eau-de-Cologne on the polished arm 
of the sofa, and instinctively sought to wipe it off. But she 
kept her back turned to her son much longer than was 
necessary ; and, when she spoke, her voice seemed unusual 
and constrained. 

“ You have taken some steps about the rioters, I sup- 
pose? You don’t apprehend any more violence, do you? 
Where were the police? Never at hand when they’re 
wanted ! ” 

“ On the contrary, I saw three or four of them, when the 
gates gave way, struggling and beating about in fine fashion ; 
and more came running up just when the yard was clearing. 
I might have given some of the fellows in charge then, if I 
had had my wits about me. But there will be no difficulty ; 
plenty of people can identify them.” 

“ But won’t they come back to-night ? ” 

221 


North and South 

“ I’m going to see about a sufficient guard for the pre- 
mises. I have appointed to meet Captain Hanbury in half- 
an-hour at the station.” 

“You must have some tea first.” 

“ Tea ! Yes, I suppose I must. It’s half-past six, 
and I may be out for some time. Don’t sit up for me, 
mother.” 

“You expect me to go to bed before I have seen you safe, 
do you ? ” 

“ Well, perhaps not.” He hesitated for a moment. “ But 
if I’ve time, I shall go round by Crampton, after I’ve 
arranged with the police and seen Hamper and Clarkson.” 
Their eyes met ; they look at each other intently for a 
minute. Then she asked — 

“ Why are you going round by Crampton ? ” 

“ To ask after Miss Hale.” 

“ I will send. Williams must take the water-bed she came 
to ask for. He shall inquire how she is.” 

“ I must go myself.” 

“Not merely to ask how Miss Hale is ? ” 

“No, not merely for that. I want to thank her for the 
way in which she stood between me and the mob.” 

“ What made you go down at all ? It was putting your 
head into the lion’s mouth ! ” 

He glanced sharply at her ; saw that she did not know 
what had passed between him and Margaret in the drawing- 
room ; and replied by another question — 

“ Shall you be afraid to be left without me, until I can 
get some of the police ; or had we better send Williams for 
them now, and they could be here by the time we have done 
tea ? There’s no time to be lost. I must be off in a quarter 
of an hour.” 

Mrs. Thornton left the room. Her servants wondered at 
her directions, usually so sharply-cut and decided, now con- 
fused and uncertain. Mr. Thornton remained in the dining- 
room, trying to think of the business he had to do at the 
police-office, and in reality thinking of Margaret. Everything 
. 222 


Mistakes 

seemed dim and vague beyond — behind — besides the touch 
of her arms round his neck — the soft clinging which made 
the dark colour come and go in his cheek as he thought 
of it. 

The tea would have been very silent, but for Fanny’s 
perpetual description of her own feelings : how she had been 
alarmed — and then thought they were gone — and then felt 
sick and faint and trembling in every limb. 

“ There, that’s enough,” said her brother, rising from the 
table. “ The reality was enough for me.” He was going to 
leave the room, when his mother stopped him with her hand 
upon his arm. 

“ You will come back here before you go to the Hales’,” 
said she, in a low, anxious voice. 

“ I know what I know,” said Fanny to herself. 

“ Why ? Will it be too late to disturb them ? ” 

“John, come back to me for this one evening. It will 
be late for Mrs. Hale. But that is not it. To-morrow, you 

will Come back to-night, John ! ” She had seldom 

pleaded with her son at all — she was too proud for that : but 
she had never pleaded in vain. 

“I will return straight here after I have done my 
business. You will be sure to inquire after them ? — after 
her ? ” 

Mrs. Thornton was by no means a talkative companion 
to Fanny, nor yet a good listener while her son was absent. 
But, on his return, her eyes and ears were keen to see and to 
listen to all the details which he could give, as to the steps 
he had taken to secure himself, and those whom he chose to 
employ, from any repetition of the day’s outrages. He 
clearly saw his object. Punishment and suffering were the 
natural consequences to those who had taken part in the 
riot. All that was necessary, in order that property should 
be protected, and that the will of the proprietor might cut to 
his end, clean and sharp as a sword. 

“ Mother ! You know what I have got to say to Miss 
Hale, to-morrow ? ” 


223 


North and South 

The question came upon her suddenly, during a pause in 
which she, at least, had forgotten Margaret. 

She looked up at him. 

“ Yes ; I do. You can hardly do otherwise.” 

“ Do otherwise ! I don’t understand you.” 

“ I mean that, after allowing her feelings so to overcome 
her, I consider you bound in honour ” 

“ Bound in honour ! ” said he scornfully. “ I’m afraid 
honour has nothing to do with it. ‘ Her feelings overcome 
her ! ’ What feelings do you mean ? ” 

“Nay, John, there is no need to be angry. Did she not 
rush down and cling to you to save you from danger ? ” 

“ She did ! ” said he. “ But, mother,” continued he, 
stopping short in his walk right in front of her, “ I dare 
not hope. I never was faint-hearted before ; but I cannot 
believe such a creature cares for me.” 

“ Don’t be foolish, John. Such a creature ! Why, she 
might be a duke’s daughter, to hear you speak. And what 
proof more would you have, I wonder, of her caring for you ? 
I can believe she has had a struggle with her aristocratic 
way of viewing things ; but I like her the better for seeing 
clearly at last. It is a good deal for me to say,” said Mrs. 
Thornton, smiling slowly, while the tears stood in her eyes ; 
“ for after to-night, I stand second. It was to have you to 
myself, all to myself, a few hours longer, that I begged you 
not to go till to-morrow.” 

“ Dearest mother ! ” (Still, love is selfish, and in an 
instant he reverted to his own hopes and fears in a way that 
drew the cold creeping shadow over Mrs. Thornton’s heart.) 
“ But I know she does not care for me. I shall put myself 
at her feet — I must. If it were but one chance in a thousand 
— or a jnillion — I should do it.” 

“ Don’t fear ! ” said his mother, crushing down her own 
personal mortification at the little notice he had taken of the 
rare ebullition of her maternal feelings — of the pang of 
jealousy that betrayed the intensity of her disregarded love. 
“ Don’t be afraid,” she said coldly. “ As far as love may go 

224 


Mistakes 

she may be worthy of you. It must have taken a good deal 
to overcome her pride. Don’t be afraid, John,” said she, 
kissing him, as she wished him good-night. And she went 
slowly and majestically out of the room. But when she got 
into her own, she locked the door, and sate down to cry 
unwonted tears. 

Margaret entered the room (where her father and mother 
still sat, holding low conversation together), looking very 
pale and white. She came close up to them before she could 
trust herself to speak. 

“ Mrs. Thornton will send the water-bed, mamma.” 

“ Dear, how tired you look ! Is it very hot, Margaret ? ” 

“ Very hot, and the streets are rather rough with the 
strike.” 

Margaret’s colour came back vivid and bright as ever; 
but it faded away instantly. 

“ Here has been a message from Bessy Higgins, asking 
you to go to her,” said Mrs. Hale. “ But I’m sure you look 
too tired.” 

“ Yes ! ” said Margaret. “ I am tired, I cannot go.” 

She was very silent and trembling while she made tea. 
She was thankful to see her father so much occupied with 
her mother as not to notice her looks. Even after her 
mother went to bed, he was not content to be absent from 
her, but undertook to read her to sleep. Margaret was 
alone. 

“ Now I will think of it — now I will remember it all. 
I could not before — I dared not.” She sat still in her chair, 
her hands clasped on her knees, her lips compressed, her 
eyes fixed as one who sees a vision. She drew a deep 
breath. 

“ I, who hate scenes — I, who have despised people for 
showing emotion — who have thought them wanting in self- 
control — I went down and must needs throw myself into the 
m£lee, like a romantic fool ! Did I do any good ? They 
would have gone away without me, I dare say.” But this 

225 Q 


North and South 

was overleaping the rational conclusion — as in an instant 
her well-poised judgment felt. “No, perhaps they would 
not. I did some good. But what possessed me to defend 
that man as if he were a helpless child ! Ah ! ” said she, 
clenching her hands together, “ it is no wonder those people 
thought I was in love with him, after disgracing myself in 
that way. I in love — and with him too ! ” Her pale cheeks 
suddenly became one flame of fire ; and she covered her face 
with her hands. When she took them away, her palms 
were wet with scalding tears. 

“ Oh how low I am fallen that they should say that of 
me ! I could not have been so brave for any one else, just 
because he was so utterly indifferent to me — if, indeed, I do 
not positively dislike him. It made me the more anxious 
that there should be fair play on each side ; and I could see 
what fair play was. It was not fair,” said she vehemently, 
“ that he should stand there — sheltered, awaiting the soldiers, 
who might catch those poor maddened creatures as in a trap 
— without an effort on his part to bring them to reason. 
And it was worse than unfair for them to set on him as they 
threatened. I would do it again, let who will say what they 
like of me. If I saved one blow, one cruel, angry action that 
might otherwise have been committed, I did a woman’s 
work. Let them insult my maiden pride as they will — I 
walk pure before God ! " 

She looked up, and a noble peace seemed to descend and 
calm her face, till it was “ stiller than chiselled marble.” 

Dixon came in — 

“ If you please, Miss Margaret, here’s the water-bed from 
Mrs. Thornton’s. It’s too late for to-night, I’m afraid, for 
missus is nearly asleep ! but it will do nicely for to-morrow.” 

“ Very,” said Margaret. “ You must send our best 
thanks.” 

Dixon left the room for a moment. 

“If you please, Miss Margaret, he says he’s to ask 
particular how you are. I think he must mean missus ; but 
he says his last words were, to ask how Miss Hale was.” 

226 


Mistakes 

“ Me ! ” said Margaret, drawing herself up. “I am 
quite well. Tell him I am perfectly well." But her com- 
plexion was as deadly white as her handkerchief ; and her 
head ached intensely. 

Mr. Hale now came in. He had left his sleeping wife ; 
and wanted, as Margaret saw, to be amused and interested 
by something that she was to tell him. With sweet patience 
did she bear her pain, without a word of complaint; and 
rummaged up numberless small subjects for conversation — 
all except the riot, and that she never named once. It 
turned her sick to think of it. 

“ Good-night, Margaret. I have every chance of a good 
night myself, and you are looking very pale with your 
watching. I shall call Dixon if your mother needs anything. 
Do you go to bed and sleep like a top; for I’m sure you 
need it, poor child ! ” 

“ Good-night, papa ! ” 

She let her colour go — the false smile fade away — the 
eyes grow dull with heavy pain. She released her strong 
will from its laborious task. Till morning she might feel ill 
and weary. 

She lay down and never stirred. To move hand or foot, 
or even so much as one finger, would have been an exertion 
beyond the powers of either volition or motion. She was so 
tired, so stunned, that she thought she never slept at all; 
her feverish thoughts passed and repassed the boundary 
between sleeping and waking, and kept their own miserable 
identity. She could not be alone, prostrate, powerless as 
she was — a cloud of faces looked up at her, giving her no 
idea of fierce vivid anger, or of personal danger, but a deep 
sense of shame that she should thus be the object of 
universal regard — a sense of shame so acute that it seemed 
as if she would fain have burrowed into the earth to hide 
herself, and yet she could not escape out of that unwinking 
glare of many eyes. 


227 


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CHAPTER XXIV 

MISTAKES CLEARED UP 

« Your beauty was the first that won the place, 

And scal’d the walls of my undaunted heart, 

Which, captive now, pines in a caitive case, 

Unkindly met with rigour for desert : — 

Yet not the less your servant shall abide, 

In spite of rude repulse or silent pride.” 

William Fowler. 

The next morning, Margaret dragged herself up, thankful 
that the night was over — unrefreshed, yet rested. All had 
gone well through the house ; her mother had only wakened 
once. A little breeze was stirring in the hot air ; and, though 
there were no trees to show the playful tossing movement 
caused by the wind among the leaves, Margaret knew how, 
somewhere or another, by wayside, in copses, or in thick 
green woods, there was a pleasant, murmuring, dancing 
sound — a rushing and falling noise, the very thought of 
which was an echo of distant gladness in her heart. 

She sat at her work in Mrs. Hale’s room. As soon as 
that forenoon slumber was over, she would help her mother 
to dress ; after dinner, she would go and see Bessy Higgins. 
She would banish all recollection of the Thornton family — 
no need to think of them till they absolutely stood before 
her in flesh and blood. But, of course, the effort not to 
think of them brought them only the more strongly before 
her; and, from time to time, the hot flush came over her 
pale face, sweeping it into colour, as a sunbeam from between 
watery clouds comes swiftly moving over the sea. 

Dixon opened the door very softly, and stole on tiptoe up 
to Margaret, sitting by the shaded window. 

“ Mr. Thornton, Miss Margaret. He is in the drawing- 
room ** 


228 


Mistakes cleared up 

Margaret dropped her sewing. 

“ Did he ask for me ? Isn’t papa come in ? M 

“ He asked for you, miss ; and master is out." 

“ Very well, I will come,” said Margaret quietly. But 
she lingered strangely. 

Mr. Thornton stood by one of the windows, with his 
back to the door, apparently absorbed in watching something 
in the street. But, in truth, he was afraid of himself. His 
heart beat thick at the thought of her coming. He could 
not forget the touch of her arms around his neck, impatiently 
felt as it had been at the time ; but now the recollection of 
her clinging defence of him seemed to thrill him through 
and through — to melt away every resolution, all power of 
self-control, as if it were wax before a fire. He dreaded lest 
he should go forwards to meet her, with his arms held out 
in mute entreaty that she would come and nestle there, as 
she had done, all unheeded, the day before, but never un- 
heeded again. His heart throbbed loud and quick. Strong 
man as he was, he trembled at the anticipation of what he 
had to say, and how it might be received. She might droop, 
and flush, and flutter to his arms, as to her natural home 
and resting-place. One moment he glowed with impatience 
at the thought that she might do this — the next he feared a 
passionate rejection, the very idea of which withered up his 
future with so deadly a blight that he refused to think of it. 
He was startled by the sense of the presence of some one 
else in the room. He turned round. She had come in so 
gently, that he had never heard her ; the street noises had 
been more distinct to his inattentive ear than her slow 
movements, in her soft muslin gown. 

She stood by the table, not offering to sit down. Her 
eyelids were dropped half over her eyes ; her teeth were 
shut, not compressed ; her lips were just parted over them, 
allowing the white line to be seen between their curves. Her 
slow deep breathings dilated her thin and beautiful nostrils ; 
it was the only motion visible on her countenance. The 
fine-grained skin, the oval cheek, the rich outline of her 

229 


North and South 

mouth, its corners deep set in dimples — were all wan and 
pale to-day ; the loss of their usual natural healthy colour 
being made more evident by the heavy shadow of the dark 
hair, brought down upon the temples, to hide all sign of the 
blow she had received. Her head, for all its drooping eyes, 
,was thrown a little back, in the old proud attitude. Her 
long arms hung motionless by her sides. Altogether she 
looked like some prisoner, falsely accused of a crime that 
she loathed and despised, and from which she was too 
indignant to justify herself. 

Mr. Thornton made a hasty step or two forwards ; re- 
covered himself, and went with quiet firmness to the door 
(which she had left open), and shut it. Then he came back, 
and stood opposite to her for a moment, receiving the general 
impression of her beautiful presence, before he dared to 
disturb it, perhaps to repel it, by what he had to say. 

“ Miss Hale, I was very ungrateful yesterday ” 

“ You had nothing to be grateful for,’' said she, raising 
her eyes, and looking full and straight at him. “ You mean, 
I suppose, that you believe you ought to thank me for what 
I did.” In spite of herself — in defiance of her anger — the 
thick blushes came all over her face, and burnt into her 
very eyes ; which fell not nevertheless from their grave and 
steady look. “ It was only a natural instinct ; any woman 
would have done just the same. We all feel the sanctity 
of our sex as a high privilege when we see danger. I 
ought rather,” said she hastily, “to apologise to you, for 
having said thoughtless words which sent you down into 
the danger.” 

“ It was not your words ; it was the truth they conveyed, 
pungently as it was expressed. But you shall not drive me 
off upon that, and so escape the expression of my deep 

gratitude, my” He was on the verge now; he would 

not speak in the haste of his hot passion ; he would weigh 
each word. He would; and his will was triumphant. He 
stopped in mid career. 

“ I do not try to escape from anything,” said she. “ I 
230 


Mistakes cleared up 

simply say, that you owe me no gratitude ; and I may add, 
that any expression of it will be painful to me, because I do 
not feel that I deserve it. Still, if it will relieve you from 
even a fancied obligation, speak on.” 

“ I do not want to be relieved from any obligation,” said 
he, goaded by her calm manner. “ Fancied, or not fancied 
— I question not myself to know which — I choose to believe 
that I owe my very life to you — ay — smile, and think it an 
exaggeration if you will. I believe it, because it adds a value 
to that life to think — oh, Miss Hale ! ” continued he, lowering 
his voice to such a tender intensity of passion that she 
shivered and trembled before him, “ to think circumstance 
so wrought, that whenever I exult in existence henceforward, 
I may say to myself, ‘ All this gladness in life, all honest 
pride in doing my work in the world, all this keen sense of 
being, I owe to her ! ’ And it doubles the gladness, it makes 
the pride glow, it sharpens the sense of existence till I hardly 
know if it is pain or pleasure to think that I owe it to 
one — nay, you must, you shall hear,” — said he, stepping 
forwards with stern determination — “ to one whom I love, 
as I do not believe man ever loved woman before.” He 
held her hand tight in his. He panted as he listened for 
what should come. He threw the hand away with indignation 
as he heard her icy tone ; for icy it was, though the words 
came faltering out, as if she knew not where to find them. 

“ Your way of speaking shocks me. It is blasphemous. 
I cannot help it, if that is my first feeling. It might not 
be so, I dare say, if I understood the kind of feeling you 
describe. I do not want to vex you ; and besides, we must 
speak gently, for mamma is asleep ; but your whole manner 
offends me ” 

“How?” exclaimed he. “Offends you! I am indeed 
most unfortunate.” 

“ Yes ! ” said she, with recovered dignity. “ I do feel 
offended ; and, I think, justly. You seem to fancy that my 
conduct of yesterday ” — again the deep carnation blush, but 
this time with eyes kindling with indignation rather than 

231 


North and South 

shame — “ was a personal act between you and me ; and that 
you may come and thank me for it, instead of perceiving, as 
a gentleman would — yes ! a gentleman,” she repeated, in 
allusion to their former conversation about that word, “ that 
any woman, worthy of the name of woman, would come 
forward to shield, with her reverenced helplessness, a man 
in danger from the violence of numbers.” 

“ And the gentleman thus rescued is forbidden the relief 
of thanks 1 ” he broke in contemptuously. “ I am a man. 
I claim the right of expressing my feelings.” 

“ And I yielded to the right ; simply saying that you 
gave me pain by insisting upon it,” she replied proudly. 
“ But you seem to have imagined, that I was not merely 
guided by womanly instinct, but ” — and here the passionate 
tears (kept down for long — struggled with vehemently) came 
up into her eyes and choked her voice — “ but that I was 
prompted by some particular feeling for you — you ! Why, 
there was not a man — not a poor desperate man in all 
that crowd — for whom I had not more sympathy — for 
whom I should not have done what little I could more 
heartily.” 

“You may speak on, Miss Hale. I am aware of all 
these misplaced sympathies of yours. I now believe that 
it was only your innate sense of oppression — (yes; I, 
though a master, may be oppressed) — that made you act 
so nobly as you did. I know you despise me ; allow me to 
say, it is because you do not understand me.” 

“ I do not care to understand,” she replied, taking hold 
of the table to steady herself ; for she thought him cruel — as, 
indeed, he was — and she was weak with her indignation. 

“ No, I see you do not. You are unfair and unjust.” 

Margaret compressed her lips. She would not speak in 
answer to such accusations. But, for all that — for all his 
savage words, he could have thrown himself at her feet, and 
kissed the hem of her garment. She did not' speak ; she did 
not move. The tears of wounded pride fell hot and fast. 
He waited awhile, longing for her to say something, even a 

232 


Mistakes cleared up 

taunt, to which he might reply. But she was silent. He 
took up his hat. 

“ One word more. You look as if you thought it tainted 
you to be loved by me. You cannot avoid it. Nay, I, if I 
would, cannot cleanse you from it. But I would not if I 
could. I have never loved any woman before : my life has 
been too busy, my thoughts too much absorbed with other 
things. Now I love and will love. But do not be afraid of 
too much expression on my part.” 

“ I am not afraid,” she replied, lifting herself straight up. 
“ No one yet has ever dared to be impertinent to me, and no 
one ever shall. But, Mr. Thornton, you have been very 
kind to my father,” said she, changing her whole tone and 
bearing to a most womanly softness. “ Don’t let us go on 
making each other angry. Pray don’t ! ” He took no 
notice of her words ; he occupied himself in smoothing the 
nap of his hat with his coat-sleeve, for half a minute or so ; 
and then, rejecting her offered hand, and making as if he 
did not see her grave look of regret, he turned abruptly 
away, and left the room. Margaret caught one glance at his 
face before he went. 

When he was gone, she thought she had seen the gleam 
of unshed tears in his eyes ; and that turned her proud dis- 
like into something different and kinder, if nearly as painful 
— self-reproach for having caused such mortification to any 
one. 

“ But how could I help it ? ” asked she of herself. “ I 
never liked him. I was civil; but I took no trouble to 
conceal my indifference. Indeed, I never thought about 
myself or him, so my manners must have shown the truth. 
All that yesterday he might mistake. But that is his fault, 
not mine. I would do it again, if need were, though it does 
lead me into all this shame and trouble.” 


23* 


North and South 


CHAPTER XXVj 

FREDERICK 

“ Revenge may have her own ; 

Roused discipline aloud proclaims their cause, 

And injured navies urge their broken laws.” 

Byron. 

Margaret began to wonder whether all offers were as unex- 
pected beforehand — as distressing at the time of their occur- 
rence, as the two she had had. An involuntary comparison 
between Mr. Lennox and Mr. Thornton arose in her mind. 
She had been sorry that an expression of any other feeling 
than friendship had been lured out by circumstances from 
Henry Lennox. That regret was the predominant feeling, on 
the first occasion of her receiving a proposal. She had not 
felt so stunned — so impressed as she did now, when echoes 
of Mr. Thornton’s voice yet lingered about the room. In 
Lennox’s case, he seemed for a moment to have slid over the 
boundary between friendship and love ; and, the instant after- 
wards, to regret it nearly as much as she did, although for 
different reasons. In Mr. Thornton’s case, as far as Mar- 
garet knew, there was no intervening stage of friendship. 
Their intercourse had been one continued series of opposi- 
tions. Their opinions clashed ; and, indeed, she had never 
perceived that he had cared for her opinions, as belonging to 
her, the individual. As far as they defied his rock-like power 
of character, his passion-strength, he seemed to throw them 
off from him with contempt, until she felt the weariness of 
the exertion of making useless protests ; and now, he had 
come, in this strange, wild, passionate way, to make known 
his love ! For, although at first it had struck her that his 
offer was forced and goaded out of him by sharp compassion 
for the exposure she had made of herself — which he, like 
others, might misunderstand — yet, even before he left the 
room — and certainly, not five minutes after, the clear 

234 


Frederick 

conviction dawned upon her, shined bright upon her, that he 
did love her ; that he had loved her ; that he would love 
her. And she shrank and shuddered as under the fascina- 
tion of some great power, repugnant to her whole previous 
life. She crept away, and hid from his idea. But it was of 
no use. To parody a line out of Fairfax’s Tasso — 

“ His strong idea wandered through her thought.” 

She disliked him the more for having mastered her inner 
will. How dared he say that he would love her still, even 
though she shook him off with contempt ? She wished she 
had spoken more — stronger. Sharp, decisive speeches came 
thronging into her mind, now that it was too late to utter 
them. The deep impression made by the interview was like 
that of a horror in a dream ; that will not leave the room 
although we waken up, and rub our eyes, and force a stiff rigid 
smile upon our lips. It is there— there, cowering and gibber- 
ing, with fixed ghastly eyes, in some comer of the chamber, 
listening to hear whether we dare to breathe of its presence 
to any one. And we dare not ; poor cowards that we are ! 

And so she shuddered away from the threat of his endur- 
ing love. What did he mean? Had she not the power to 
daunt him? She would see. It was more daring than 
became a man to threaten her so. Did he ground it upon 
the miserable yesterday? If need were, she would do the 
same to-morrow — by a crippled beggar, willingly and gladly, 
— but by him she would do it, just as bravely, in spite of 
his deductions, and the cold slime of woman’s impertinence. 
She did it because it was right, and simple, and true to save 
where she could save ; even to try to save. “ Fais ce que 
dois, advienne que pourra.” 

Hitherto she had not stirred from where he had left her ; 
no outward circumstances had roused her out of the trance 
of thought in which she had been plunged by his last words, 
and by the look of his deep intent passionate eyes, as their 
flames had made her own fall before them. She went to the 
window, and threw it open, to dispel the oppression which 

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North and South 

hung around her. Then she went and opened the door, 
with a sort of impetuous wish to shake off the recollection 
of the past hour, in the company of others, or in active 
exertion. But all was profoundly hushed in the noonday 
stillness of a house where an invalid catches the unrefresh- 
ing sleep that is denied to the night-hours. Margaret would 
not be alone. What should she do ? “Go and see Bessy 
Higgins, of course,” thought she, as the recollection of the 
message sent the night before flashed into her mind. And 
away she went. 

When she got there, she found Bessy lying on the settle, 
moved close to the fire, though the day was sultry and oppres- 
sive. She was laid down quite flat, as if resting languidly 
after some paroxysm of pain. Margaret felt sure she ought 
to have the greater freedom of breathing which a more 
sitting posture would procure; and, without a word, she 
raised her up, and so arranged the pillows, that Bessy was 
more at ease, though very languid. 

“ I thought I should na’ ha’ seen yo’ again,” said she at 
last, looking wistfully in Margaret’s face. 

“ I’m afraid you’re much worse. But I could not have 
come yesterday, my mother was so ill — for many reasons,” 
said Margaret, colouring. 

“ Yo’d m’appen think I went beyond my place in send- 
ing Mary for yo’. But the wranglin’ and the loud voices had 
just torn me to pieces, and I thought when father left, oh ! 
if I could just hear her voice, reading me some words o’ 
peace and promise, I could die away into the silence and 
rest o’ God, just as a baby is hushed up to sleep by its 
mother’s lullaby.” 

“ Shall I read you a chapter, now ? ” 

“ Ay, do ! M’appen I shan’t listen to th’ sense, at first ! 
it will seem far away — but when yo’ come to words I like — 
to th’ comforting texts — it’ll seem close in my ear, and going 
through me as it were.” 

Margaret began. Bessy tossed to and fro. If, by an 
effort, she attended for one moment, it seemed as though 

236 


Frederick 

she were convulsed into double restlessness the next. At 
last, she burst out : “ Don’t go on reading. It’s no use. I’m 
blaspheming all the time in my mind, wi’ thinking angrily 
on what canna be helped. — Yo’d hear of th’ riot, m’appen, 
yesterday at Marlborough Mills? Thornton’s factory, yo’ 
know.” 

“ Your father was not there, was he ? ” said Margaret, 
colouring deeply. 

“Not he. He’d ha’ given his right hand if it had never 
come to pass. It’s that that’s fretting me. He's fairly 
knocked down in his mind by it. It’s no use telling him, 
fools will always break out o’ bounds. Yo’ never saw a man 
so down-hearted as he is.” 

“ But why ? ” asked Margaret. “ I don’t understand.” 

“ Why, yo’ see, he’s a committee-man on this special 
strike. Th’ Union appointed him because, though I say it as 
shouldn’t say it, he’s reckoned a deep chap, and true to th’ 
back-bone. And he and t’other committee-men laid their 
plans. They were to hou’d together through thick and thin ; 
what the major part thought, t’others were to think, whether 
they would or no. And above all there was to be no going 
again’ the law of the land. Folk would go with them if they 
saw them striving and starving wi’ dumb patience; but if 
there was once any noise o’ fighting and struggling — even 
wi’ knobsticks — all was up, as they knew by th’ experience 
of many and many a time before. They would try and get 
speech o’ th’ knobsticks, and coax ’em, and reason wi’ em, 
and m’appen warn ’em off; but whatever came, the Com- 
mittee charged all members o’ th’ Union to lie down and die, 
if need were, without striking a blow ; and then they 
reckoned they were sure o’ carrying th’ public with them. 
And beside all that, Committee knew they were right in their 
demand, and they didn’t want to have right all mixed up wi’ 
wrong, till folk can’t separate it, no more nor I can the 
physic-powder from th’ jelly yo’ gave me to mix it in ; jelly is 
much the biggest, but powder tastes it all through. Well, 
I’ve told yo’ at length about this’n, but I am tired out. Yo’ 

237 


North and South 

just think for yo’rsel’, what it mun be for father to have a 1 
his work undone, and by such a fool as Boucher, who must 
needs go right again the orders of Committee, and ruin th’ 
strike, just as bad as if he meant to be a Judas. Eh ! but 
father giv’d it him last night ! He went so far as to say, he’d 
go and tell police where they might find th’ ringleader o’ th’ 
riot ; he’d give him up to th’ mill-owners to do what they 
would wi’ him. He’d show the world that th’ real leaders o’ 
the strike were not such as Boucher, but steady thoughtful 
men ; good hands, and good citizens, who were friendly to 
law and judgment, and would uphold order ; who only 
wanted their right wage, and wouldn’t work, even though 
they starved, till they got ’em ; but who would ne’er injure 
property or life. For,” dropping her voice, “ they do say, 
that Boucher threw a stone at Thornton’s sister, that welly 
killed her.” 

“ That’s not true,” said Margaret. “ It was not Boucher 
that threw the stone ” she went first red, then white. 

“ Yo’d be there then, were yo’ ? ” asked Bessy languidly : 
for indeed, she had spoken with many pauses, as if speech 
was unusually difficult to her. 

“ Yes. Never mind. Go on. Only it was not Boucher 
that threw the stone. But what did he answer to your 
father ? ” 

“ He did na speak words. He were all in such a tremble 
wi’ spent passion, I could na bear to look at him. I heard 
his breath coming quick, and at one time I thought he were 
sobbing. But when father said he’d give him up to the 
police, he gave a great cry, and struck father on th’ face wi’ 
his closed fist, and he off like lightning. Father were 
stunned wi* the blow at first, for all Boucher were weak wi’ 
passion and wi’ clemming. He sat down a bit, and put his 
hand afore his eyes ; and then made for th’ door. I dunno’ 
where I got the strength, but I threw myseT off th’ settle and 
clung to him. ‘ Father, father ! ’ said I. ‘ Thou’ll never go 
peach on that poor clemmed man. I’ll never leave go on 
thee, till thou sayst thou wunnot’ ‘ Dunnot be a fool,’ says 

238 


Frederick 

he, ‘ words come readier than deeds to most men. I never 
thought o’ telling th’ police on him ; though, by G — , he 
deserves it, and I should na ha’ minded if some one else had 
done the dirty work, and got him clapped up. But now he 
has strucken me, I could do it less nor ever, for it would be 
getting other men to take up my quarrel. But if ever he gets 
well o’er this clemming, and is in good condition, he and I’ll 
have an up and down fight, purring an’ a’, and I’ll see what 
I can do for him.’ And so father shook me off, — for indeed 
I was low and faint enough, and his face was all clay white, 
where it weren’t bloody, and turned me sick to look at. And 
I know not if I slept or waked, or were in a dead swoon, till 
Mary come in ; and I telled her to fetch yo’ to me. And 
now dunnot talk to me, but just read out th’ chapter.. I’m 
easier in my mind for having spit it out ; but I want some 
thoughts of the world that’s far away to take the weary taste 
of it out of my mouth. Bead me not a sermon chapter, but 
a story chapter ; they’ve pictures in them, which I see when 
my eyes are shut. Bead about the New Heavens, and the 
New Earth ; and m’appen I’ll forget this.” 

Margaret read in her soft low voice. Though Bessy’s 
eyes were shut, she was listening for some time, for the 
moisture of tears gathered heavy on her eyelashes. At last 
she slept ; with many starts, and muttered pleadings. Mar- 
garet covered her up, and left her, for she had an uneasy 
consciousness that she might be wanted at home, and yet, 
until now, it seemed cruel to leave the dying girl. 

Mrs. Hale was in the drawing-room on her daughter’s 
return. It was one of her better days, and she was full of 
praises of the water-bed. It had been more like the beds at 
Sir John Beresford’s than anything she had slept on since. 
She did not know how it was, but people seemed to have lost 
the art of making the same kind of beds as they used to do 
in her youth. One would think it was easy enough ; there 
was the same kind of feathers to be had, and yet somehow, 
till this last night, she did not know when she had had a 
good sound resting sleep. 


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North and South 

Mr. Hale suggested, that something of the merits of the 
feather-beds of former days might be attributed to the activity 
of youth, which gave a relish to rest ; but this idea was not 
kindly received by his wife. 

“ No, indeed, Mr. Hale, it was those beds at Sir John’s. 
Now, Margaret, you’re young enough, and go about in the 
day ; are the beds comfortable ? I appeal to you. Do they 
give you a feeling of perfect repose when you lie down upon 
them ; or rather, don’t you toss about, and try in vain to find 
an easy position, and waken in the morning as tired as when 
you went to bed ? " 

Margaret laughed. “ To tell the truth, mamma, I’ve 
never thought about my bed at all, what kind it is. I’m 
so sleepy at night, that if I only lie down anywhere, 
I nap off directly. So I don’t think I’m a competent 
witness. But then, you know, I never had the opportunity 
of trying Sir John Beresford’s beds. I never was at 
Oxenham.” 

“ Were not you ? Oh, no ! to be sure. It was poor 
darling Fred I took with me, I remember. I only went to 
Oxenham once after I was married, -^to your Aunt Shaw’s 
wedding ; and poor little Fred was the baby then. And I 
know Dixon did not like changing from lady’s maid to nurse ; 
and I was afraid that if I took her near her old home, and 
amongst her own people, she might want to leave me. But 
poor baby was taken ill at Oxenham, with his teething ; and, 
what with my being a great deal with Anna just before her 
marriage, and not being very strong myself, Dixon had more 
charge of him than she ever had before ; and it made her so 
fond of him, and she was so proud when he would turn away 
from every one and cling to her, that I don’t believe she ever 
thought of leaving me again ; though it was very different 
from what she’d been accustomed to. Poor Fred ! Every- 
body loved him. He was born with the gift of winning 
hearts. It makes me think very badly of Captain Beid when 
I know that he disliked my own dear boy. I think it a 
certain proof he had a bad heart. Ah ! Your poor father, 

240 


Frederick 

Margaret. He has left the room. He can’t bear to hear 
Fred spoken of.” 

“ I love to hear about him, mamma. Tell me all you 
like ; you never can tell me too much. Tell me what he was 
like as a baby.” 

“ Why, Margaret, you must not be hurt, but he was 
much prettier than you were. I remember, when I first saw 
you in Dixon’s arms, I said, ‘ Dear, what an ugly little thing ! ’ 
And she said, ‘ It’s not every child that’s like Master Fred, 
bless him ! ’ Dear, how well I remember it! Then I could 
have had Fred in my arms every minute of the day, and his 
cot was close by my bed ; and now, now — Margaret — I don’t 
know where my boy is, and sometimes I think I shall never 
see him again.” 

Margaret sat down by her mother’s sofa on a little stool, 
and softly took hold of her hand, caressing it and kissing it, 
as if to comfort. Mrs. Hale cried without restraint. At last, 
she sat straight, stiff up on the sofa, and turning round to 
her daughter, she said with tearful, almost solemn earnest- 
ness, “ Margaret, if I can get better — if God lets me have a 
chance of recovery, it must be through seeing my son 
Frederick once more. It will waken up all the poor springs 
of health left in me.” 

She paused, and seemed to try and gather strength for 
something more yet to be said. Her voice was choked as 
she went on — was quavering as with the contemplation of 
some strange, yet closely-present idea. 

“ And, Margaret, if I am to die — if I am one of those 
appointed to die before many weeks are over — I must see my 
child first. I cannot think how it must be managed ; but I 
charge you, Margaret, as you yourself hope for comfort in 
your last illness, bring him to me that I may bless him. 
Only for five minutes, Margaret. There could be no danger 
in five minutes. Oh, Margaret, let me see him before 
I die ! ” 

Margaret did not think of anything that might be utterly 
unreasonable in this speech : we do not look for reason or logic 

241 B 


North and South 

in the passionate entreaties of those who are sick unto death ; 
we are stung with the recollection of a thousand slighted 
opportunities of fulfilling the wishes of those who will soon 
pass away from among us ; and, do they ask us for the 
future happiness of our lives, we lay it at their feet, and will 
it away from us. But this wish of Mrs. Hale”s was so 
natural, so just, so right to both parties, that Margaret felt as 
if, on Frederick’s account as well as on her mother’s, she 
ought to overlook all intermediate chances of danger, and 
pledge herself to do everything in her power for its realisa- 
tion. The large, pleading, dilated eyes were fixed upon her 
wistfully, steady in their gaze, though the poor white lips 
quivered like those of a child. Margaret gently rose up and 
stood opposite to her frail mother ; so that she might gather 
the secure fulfilment of her wish from the calm steadiness 
of her daughter’s face. 

“ Mamma, I will write to-night, and tell Frederick what 
you say. I am as sure that he will come directly to us, as I 
am sure of my life. Be easy, mamma, you shall see him as 
far as anything earthly can be promised.” 

“ You will write to-night ? Oh, Margaret ? the post goes 
out at five — you will write by it, won’t you ? I have so few 
hours left — I feel, dear, as if I should not recover, though 
sometimes your father over-persuades me into hoping ; you 
will write directly, won’t you ? Don't lose a single post ; for 
just by that very post I may miss him.” 

“ But, mamma, papa is out.” 

“ Papa is out ! and what then ? Do you mean that he 
would deny me this last wish, Margaret ? Why, I should 
not be ill — be dying — if he had not taken me away from 
Helstone, to this unhealthy, smoky, sunless place.” 

“ Oh, mamma ! ” said Margaret. 

“ Yes ; it is so, indeed. He knows it himself ; he has 
said so many a time. He would do anything for me ; you 
don’t mean he would refuse me this last wish — prayer, if you 
will. And, indeed, Margaret, the longing to see Frederick 
stands between me and God. I cannot pray till I have this 

242 


Frederick 

one thing ; indeed, I cannot. Don’t lose time, dear, dear 
Margaret. Write by this very next post. Then he may be 
here — here in twenty-two days ! For he is sure to come. 
No cords or chains can keep him. In twenty- two days I 
shall see my boy/* She fell back, and for a short time she 
took no notice of the fact that Margaret sat motionless, her 
hand shading her eyes. 

“ You are not writing ! ” said her mother at last. “ Bring 
me some pens and paper; I will try and write myself.” 
She sat up, trembling all over with feverish eagerness. 
Margaret took her hand down and looked at her mother 
sadly. 

“ Only wait till papa comes in. Let us ask him how 
best to do it.” 

“ You promised, Margaret, not a quarter of an hour ago ; — 
you said he should come.” 

“ And so he shall, mamma ; don’t cry, my own dear 
mother. I’ll write here, now — you shall see me write — 
and it shall go by this very post ; and, if papa thinks fit, he 
can write again when he comes in — it is only a day’s delay. 
Oh, mamma, don’t cry so pitifully, it cuts me to the heart.” 

Mrs. Hale could not stop her tears ; they came hysteri- 
cally ; and, in truth, she made no effort to control them, but 
rather called up all the pictures of the happy past, and the 
probable future — painting the scene when she should lie a 
corpse, with the son she had longed to see in life weeping 
over he, and she unconscious of his presence — till she was 
melted by self-pity into a state of sobbing and exhaustion 
that made Margaret’s heart ache. But at last she was calm, 
and greedily watched her daughter, as she began her letter ; 
wrote it with swift urgent entreaty ; sealed it up hurriedly, 
for fear her mother should ask to see it : and then to make 
security most sure, at Mrs. Hale’s own bidding, took it her- 
self to the post-office. She was coming home when her 
father overtook her. 

“ And where have you been, my pretty maid ? ” asked he. 

“ To the post-office — with a letter ; a letter to Frederick. 

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North and South 

Oh, papa, perhaps I have done wrong : but mamma was 
seized with such a passionate yearning to see him — she said 
it would make her well again — and then she said that she 
must see him before she died — I cannot tell you how urgent 
she was ! Did I do wrong ? ” 

Mr. Hale did not reply at first. Then he said — 

“ You should have waited till I came in, Margaret/’ 

“ I tried to persuade her ” and then she was silent. 

“ I don’t know,” said Mr. Hale, after a pause. “ She 
ought to see him if she wishes it so much : for I believe it 
would do her much more good than all the doctor’s medicine, 
and, perhaps, set her up altogether ; but the danger to him, 
I’m afraid, is very great.” 

“ All these years since the mutiny, papa ? ” 

“ Yes : it is necessary, of course, for Government to take 
very stringent measures for the repression of offences against 
authority, more particularly in the navy, where a command- 
ing officer needs to be surrounded in his men’s eyes with a 
vivid consciousness of all the power there is at home to back 
him, and take up his cause, and avenge any injuries offered 
to him, if need be. Ah ! it’s no matter to them how far their 
authorities have tyrannised — galled hasty tempers to mad- 
ness — or, if that can be any excuse afterwards, it is never 
allowed for in the first instance ; they spare no expense, they 
send out ships— they scour the seas to lay hold of the 
offenders — the lapse of years does not wash out the memory 
of the offence — it is a fresh and vivid crime on the Admiralty 
books till it is blotted out by blood.” 

“ Oh, papa, what have I done ! And yet it seemed so 
right at the time. I'm sure Frederick himself would run the 
risk.” 

“ So he would ; so he should ! Nay, Margaret, I’m glad 
it is done, though I durst not have done it myself. I’m 
thankful it is as it is ; I should have hesitated till, perhaps, 
it might have been too late to do any good. Dear Margaret, 
you have done what is right about it ; and the end is beyond 
our control.” 


244 


Mother and Son 

It was all very well; but hefr father’s account of the 
relentless manner in which mutinies were punished made 
Margaret shiver and creep. If she had decoyed her brother 
home to blot out the memory of his error by his blood ! She 
saw her father’s anxiety lay deeper than the source of his 
latter cheering words. She took his arm and walked home 
pensively and wearily by his side. 


CHAPTER XXVI 

MOTHER AND SON 

I have found that holy place of rest 
Still changeless.’’ 

Mrs. Hemans. 

When Mr. Thornton had left the house that morning he was 
almost blinded by his baffled passion. He was as dizzy as if 
Margaret, instead of looking, and speaking, and moving like 
a tender graceful woman, had been a sturdy fish-wife, and 
given him a sound blow with her fists. He had positive 
bodily pain — a violent headache, and a throbbing inter- 
mittent pulse. He could not bear the noise, the garish light, 
the continued rumble and movement of the street. He called 
himself a fool for suffering so ; and yet he could not, at the 
moment, recollect the cause of his suffering, and whether it 
was adequate to the consequences it had produced. It would 
have been a relief to him, if he could have sat down and 
cried on a door-step by a little child, who was raging and 
storming, through his passionate tears, at some injury he 
had received. He said to himself that he hated Margaret ; 
but a wild, sharp sensation of love cleft his dull, thunderous 
feeling like lightning, even as he shaped the words expres- 
sive of hatred. His greatest comfort was in hugging his 
torment ; and in feeling, as he had indeed said to her, that 

245 


North and South 

though she might despise him, contemn him, treat him with 
her proud sovereign indifference, he did not change one 
whit. She could not make him change. He loved her, and 
would love her; and defy her, and this miserable bodily 
pain. 

He stood still for a moment, to make this resolution firm 
and clear. There was an omnibus passing — going into the 
country ; the conductor thought he was wishing for a place, 
and stopped near the pavement. It was too much trouble to 
apologise and explain ; so he mounted upon it, and was 
borne away — past long rows of houses — then past detached 
villas with trim gardens, till they came to the real country 
hedge-rows, and, by-and-by, to a small country town. Then 
everybody got down ; and so did Mr. Thornton, and because 
they walked away he did so too. He went into the fields, 
walking briskly, because the sharp motion relieved his mind. 
He could remember all about it now ; the pitiful figure he 
must have cut ; the absurd way in which he had gone and 
done the very thing he had so often agreed with himself in 
thinking would be the most foolish thing in the world ; and 
had met with exactly the consequences which, in these wise 
moods, he had always foretold were certain to follow, if 
he ever did make such a fool of himself. Was he bewitched 
by those beautiful eyes, that soft, half-open, sighing mouth, 
which lay so close upon his shoulder only yesterday ? He 
could not even shake off the recollection that she had been 
there; that her arms had been round him, once — if never 
again. He ouly caught glimpses of her ; he did not under- 
stand her altogether. At one time she was so brave, and at 
another so timid; now so tender, and then so haughty and 
regal proud. And then he thought over every time he had 
ever seen her once again, by way of finally forgetting her. 
He saw her in every dress, in every mood, and did not know 
which became her best. Even this morning, how magni- 
ficent she had looked — her eyes flashing out upon him at the 
idea that, because she had shared his danger yesterday, she 
had cared for him the least ! 


246 


Mother and Son 

If Mr. Thornton was a fool in the morning, as he 
assured himself at least twenty times he was, he did not grow 
much wiser in the afternoon. All that he gained in return 
for his sixpenny omnibus ride, was a more vivid conviction 
that there never was, never could be, any one like Margaret ; 
that she did not love him and never would; but that she 
• — no ! nor the whole world — should never hinder him from 
loving her. And so he returned to the little market-place, 
and remounted the omnibus to return to Milton. 

It was late in the afternoon when he was set down, near 
his warehouse. The accustomed places brought back the 
accustomed habits and trains of thought. He knew how 
much he had to do — more than his usual work, owing to 
the commotion of the day before. He had to see his 
brother magistrates ; he had to complete the arrangements, 
only half made in the morning, for the comfort and safety 
of his newly imported Irish hands ; he had to secure them 
from all chance of communication with the discontented 
workpeople of Milton. Last of all, he had to go home and 
encounter his mother. 

Mrs. Thornton had sat in the dining-room all day, 
every moment expecting the news of her son’s acceptance 
by Miss Hale. She had braced herself up many and many 
a time, at some sudden noise in the house ; had caught up 
the half- dropped work, and begun to ply her needle diligently, 
though through dimmed spectacles, and with an unsteady 
hand! and many times had the door opened, and some 
indifferent person entered on some insignificant errand. 
Then her rigid face unstiffened from its grey frost-bound 
expression, and the features dropped into the relaxed look of 
despondency, so unusual to their sternness. She wrenched 
herself away from the contemplation of all the dreary 
changes that would be brought about to herself by her son’s 
marriage ; she forced her thoughts into the accustomed 
household grooves. The newly- married couple-to-be would 
need fresh household stocks of linen ; and Mrs. Thornton 
had clothes-basket upon clothes-basket, full of table-cloths 

247 


North and South 

and napkins, brought in, and began to reckon up the store. 
There was some confusion between what was hers, and 
consequently marked G. H. T. (for George and Hannah 
Thornton), and what was her son’s — bought with his money, 
marked with his initials. Some of those marked G. H. T. 
were Dutch damask of the old kind, exquisitely fine ; none 
were like them now. Mrs. Thornton stood looking at them 
long — they had been her pride when she was first married. 
Then she knit her brows, and pinched and compressed her lips 
tight, and carefully unpicked the G. H. She went so far as to 
search for the Turkey-red marking- thread to put in the new 
initials ; but it was all used — and she had no heart to send 
for any more just yet. So she looked fixedly at vacancy ; 
a series of visions passing before her, in all of which her 
son was the principal, the sole object — her son, her pride, 
her property. Still he did not come. Doubtless he was with 
Miss Hale. The new love was displacing her already from 
her place as first in his heart. A terrible pain — a pang of 
vain jealousy — shot through her: she hardly knew whether it 
was more physical or mental ; but it forced her to sit down. 
In a moment, she was up again as straight as ever — a grim 
smile upon her face for the first time that day, ready for the 
door opening, and the rejoicing triumphant one, who should 
never know the sore regret his mother felt at his marriage. 
In all this, there was little thought enough of the future 
daughter-in-law as an individual. She was to be John’s wife. 
To take Mrs. Thornton’s place as mistress of the house, 
was only one of the rich consequences which decked out 
the supreme glory: all household plenty and comfort, all 
purple and fine linen, honour, love, obedience, troops of 
friends, would come as naturally as jewels on a king’s robe, 
and be as little thought of for their separate value. To be 
chosen by John, would separate a kitchen -wench from the 
rest of the world. And Miss Hale was not so bad. If she 
had been a Milton lass, Mrs. Thornton would have positively 
liked her. She was pungent, and had taste, and spirit, and 
flavour in her. True, she was sadly prejudiced, and very 

248 


Mother and Son 

ignorant ; but that was to be expected from her southern 
breeding. A strange sort of mortified comparison of Fanny 
with her went on in Mrs. Thornton’s mind; and for once 
she spoke harshly to her daughter; abused her roundly; 
and then, as if by way of penance, she took up Henry’s 
Commentaries, and tried to fix her attention on it, instead 
of pursuing the employment she took pride and pleasure 
in, and continuing her inspection of the table-linen. 

His step at last ! She heard him, even while she thought 
she was finishing a sentence ; while her eye did pass over it, 
and her memory could mechanically have repeated it word 
for word, she heard him come in at the hall-door. Her 
quickened sense could interpret every sound of motion ; now 
he was at the hat-stand — now at the very room-door. Why 
did he pause ? Let her know the worst. 

Yet her head was down over the book ; she did not look 
up. He came close to the table, and stood still there, 
waiting till she should have finished the paragraph which 
apparently absorbed her. By an effort she looked up. 
“ Well, John ? ” 

He knew what that little speech meant. But he had 
steeled himself. He longed to reply with a jest ; the bitter- 
ness of his heart could have uttered one, but his mother 
deserved better of him. He came round behind her, so that 
she could not see his looks, and, bending back her grey, 
stony face, he kissed it, murmuring — 

“No one loves me — no one cares for me, but you, 
mother.” 

He turned away and stood leaning his head against the 
mantelpiece, tears forcing themselves into his manly eyes. 
She stood up — she tottered. For the first time in her life, 
the strong woman tottered. She put her hands on his 
shoulders ; she was a tall woman. She looked into his face : 
she made him look at her. 

“ Mother’s love is given by God, John. It holds fast 
for ever and ever. A girl’s love is like a puff of smoke — it 
changes with every wind. And she would not have you, my 

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own lad, would not she ? ” She set her teeth ; she showed 
them like a dog for the whole length of her mouth. He 
shook his head. 

“ I am not fit for her, mother ; I knew I was not.” 

She ground out words between her closed teeth. He 
could not hear what she said; but the look in her eyes 
interpreted it to be a curse — if not as coarsely worded, as 
fell in intent as ever was uttered. And yet her heart leapt 
up light, to know he was her own again. 

“ Mother ! ” said he hurriedly, “ I cannot hear a word 
against her. Spare me — spare me! I am very weak in 
my sore heart ; — I love her yet ; I love her more than ever.” 

“ And I hate her,” said Mrs. Thornton, in a low fierce 
voice. “I tried not to hate her, when she stood between 
you and me, because — I said to myself — she will make him 
happy ; and I would give my heart’s blood to do that. But 
now, I hate her for your misery’s sake. Yes, John, it’s no 
use hiding up your aching heart from me. I am the mother 
that bore you, and your sorrow is my agony ; and if you 
don’t hate her, I do.” 

“ Then, mother, you make me love her more. She is 
unjustly treated by you, and I must make the balance even. 
But why do we talk of love or hatred ? She does not care 
for me, and that is enough* — too much. Let us never name 
the subject again. It is the only thing you can do for me 
in the matter. Let us never name her.” 

“With all my heart. I only wish that she, and all 
belonging to her, were swept back to the place they came 
from.” 

He stood still, gazing into the fire for a minute or two 
longer. Her dry, dim eyes filled with unwonted tears as she 
looked at him; but she seemed just as grim and quiet as 
usual when he next spoke. 

“ Warrants are out against three men for conspiracy, 
mother. The riot yesterday helped to knock up the strike.” 

And Margaret’s name was no more mentioned between 
Mrs. Thornton and her son. They fell back into their usual 


250 


Fruit-piece 

mode of talk — about facts, not opinions, far less feelings. 
Their voices and tones were calm and cold; a stranger 
might have gone away and thought that he had never seen 
such frigid indifference of demeanour between such near 
relations. 


CHAPTER XXVII 

FRUIT-PIECE 

“ For never anything can be amiss 
When simpleness and duty tender it.” 

Midsummer Night’s Dream. 

Mr. Thornton went straight and clear into all the interests 
of the following day. There was a slight demand for finished 
goods ; and, as it affected his branch of the trade, he took 
advantage of it, and drove hard bargains. He was sharp to 
the hour at the meeting of his brother magistrates, — giving 
them the best assistance of his strong sense, and his power 
of seeing consequences at a glance, and so coming to a rapid 
decision. Older men, men of long standing in the town, 
men of far greater wealth — realised and turned into land, 
while his was all floating capital, engaged in his trade — 
looked to him for prompt, ready wisdom. He was the one 
deputed to see and arrange with the police — to lead in all 
the requisite steps. And he cared for their unconscious 
deference no more than for the soft west wind, that scarcely 
made the smoke from the great tall chimneys swerve in its 
straight upward course. He was not aware of the silent 
respect paid to him. If it had been otherwise, he would 
have felt it as an obstacle in his progress to the object he 
had in view. As it was, he looked to the speedy accomplish- 
ment of that alone. It was his mother’s greedy ears that 
sucked in, from the womenkind of these magistrates and 

251 


North and South 

wealthy men, how highly Mr. This or Mr. That thought of 
Mr. Thornton ; that if he had not been there, things would 
have gone on very differently — very badly, indeed. He 
swept off his business right and left that day. It seemed as 
though his deep mortification of yesterday, and the stunned 
purposeless course of the hours afterwards, had cleared away 
all the mists from his intellect. He felt his power and 
revelled in it. He could almost defy his heart. If he had 
known it, he could have sang the song of the miller who 
lived by the river Dee : — 

“ I care for nobody — 

Nobody cares for me.” 

The evidence against Boucher, and other ringleaders of 
the riot, was taken before him : that against the three others, 
for conspiracy, failed. But he sternly charged the police to 
be on the watch ; for the swift right arm of the law should 
be in readiness to strike, as soon as they could prove a fault. 
And then he left the hot, reeking room in the borough court, 
and went out into the fresher, but still sultry street. It 
seemed as though he gave way all at once; he was so 
languid that he could not control his thoughts ; they would 
wander to her: they would bring back the scene — not of 
his repulse and rejection the day before, but the looks, the 
actions of the day before that. He went along the crowded 
streets mechanically, winding in and out among the people, 
but never seeing them — almost sick with longing for that 
one half-hour — that one brief space of time when she clung 
to him, and her heart beat against his — to come once again. 

“ Why, Mr. Thornton ! you’re cutting me very coolly, 
I must say. And how is Mrs. Thornton ? Brave weather 
this ! We doctors don’t like it, I can tell you ! ” 

“ I beg your pardon, Dr. Donaldson. I really didn’t see 
you. My mother’s quite well, thank you. It is a fine day, 
and good for the harvest, I hope. If the wheat is well got 
in, we shall have a brisk trade next year, whatever you 
doctors have.” 


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Fruit-piece 

“ Ay, ay. Each man for himself. Your bad weather, 
and your bad times, are my good ones. When trade is 
bad, there’s more undermining of health, and preparation 
for death, going on among you Milton men than you’re 
aware of.” 

“Not with me, Doctor. I’m made of iron. The news 
of the worst bad debt I ever had, never made my pulse 
vary. This strike, which affects me more than any one 
else in Milton — more than Hamper — never comes near 
my appetite. You must go elsewhere for a patient, Doctor.” 
j “ By the way, you’ve recommended me a good patient, 
poor lady! Not to go on talking in this heartless way, I 
seriously believe that Mrs. Hale — -that lady in Crampton you 
know — hasn’t many weeks to live. I never had any hope of 
cure, as I think I told you ; but I’ve been seeing her to-day, 
and I think very badly of her.” 

Mr. Thornton was silent. The vaunted steadiness of 
pulse failed him for an instant. 

“ Can I do anything, Doctor ? ” he asked, in an altered 
voice. “ You know — you would see, that money is not very 
plentiful; are there any comforts or dainties she ought to 
have ? ” 

“No,” replied the Doctor, shaking his head. “ She 
craves for fruit — she has a constant fever on her; but 
jargonelle pears will do as well as anything, and there are 
quantities of them in the market.” 

“ You will tell me, if there is anything I can do, I’m 
sure,” replied Mr. Thornton. “ I rely upon you.” 

“ Oh ! never fear ! I’ll not spare your purse — I know it’s 
deep enough. I wish you’d give me carte-blanche for all my 
patients, and all their wants.” 

But Mr. Thornton had no general benevolence — no 
universal philanthropy; few even would have given him 
credit for strong affections. But he went straight to the 
first fruit-shop in Milton, and chose out the bunch of purple 
grapes with the most delicate bloom upon them — the 
richest-coloured peaches — the freshest vine-leaves. They 

253 


North and South 

were packed into a basket, and the shopman awaited the 
answer to his inquiry, “ Where shall we send them to, 
sir?” 

There was no reply. “ To Marlborough Mills, I suppose, 
sir ? ” 

“ No ! ” Mr. Thornton said. “ Give the basket to me — 
I’ll take it.” 

It took up both his hands to carry it ; and he had to 
pass through the busiest part of the town for feminine 
shopping. Many a young lady of his acquaintance turned 
to look after him, and thought it strange to see him occupied 
just like a porter or an errand-boy. 

He was thinking, “ I will not be daunted from doing as I 
choose by the thought of her. I like to take this fruit to 
the poor mother, and it is simply right that I should. She 
shall never scorn me out of doing what I please. A pretty 
joke, indeed, if, for fear of a haughty girl, I failed in doing 
a kindness to a man I liked ! I do it for Mr. Hale ; I do it 
in defiance of her.” 

He went at an unusual pace, and was soon at Crampton. 
He went upstairs two steps at a time, and entered the 
drawing-room before Dixon could announce him — his face 
flushed, his eyes shining with kindly earnestness. Mrs. 
Hale lay on the sofa, heated with fever. Mr. Hale was 
reading aloud. Margaret was working on a low stool by her 
mother’s side. Her heart fluttered, if his did not, at this 
interview. But he took no notice of her — hardly of Mr. 
Hale himself ; he went up straight with his basket to Mrs. 
Hale, and said, in that subdued and gentle tone, which is so 
touching when used by a robust man in full health, 
speaking to a feeble invalid — 

“ I met Dr. Donaldson, ma’am, and as he said fruit 
would be good for you, I have taken the liberty — the great 
liberty — of bringing you some that seemed to me fine.” 
Mrs. Hale was excessively surprised ; excessively pleased ; 
quite in a tremble of eagerness. Mr. Hale, with fewer 
words, expressed a deeper gratitude. 

254 


Fruit-piece 

“ Fetch a plate, Margaret — a basket — anything.” Mar- 
garet stood up by the table, half afraid of moving or making 
any noise to arouse Mr. Thornton into a consciousness of 
her being in the room. She thought it would be awkward 
for both to be brought into conscious collision ; and fancied 
that, from her being on a low seat at first, and now standing 
behind her father, he had overlooked her in his haste. As if 
he did not feel the consciousness of her presence all over, 
though his eyes had never rested on her ! 

“ I must go,” said he, “ I cannot stay. If you will forgive 
this liberty — my rough ways — too abrupt, I fear — but I will 
be more gentle next time. You will allow me the pleasure 
of bringing you some fruit again, if I should see any that is 
tempting. Good afternoon, Mr. Hale. Good-bye, ma’am.” 

He was gone. Not one word, not one look, to Margaret. 
She believed that he had not seen her. She went for a plate 
in silence, and lifted the fruit out tenderly, with the points 
of her delicate taper fingers. It was good of him to bring 
it ; and after yesterday too ! 

“ Oh ! it is so delicious ! ” said Mrs. Hale, in a feeble 
voice. “ How kind of him to think of me ! Margaret, love, 
only taste these grapes ! Was it not good of him ? ” 

“ Yes ! ” said Margaret quietly. 

“ Margaret ! ” said Mrs. Hale, rather querulously, “ you 
won’t like anything Mr. Thornton does. I never saw 
anybody so prejudiced.” 

Mr. Hale had been peeling a peach for his wife; and, 
cutting off a small piece for himself, he said — 

“ If I had any prejudices, the gift of such delicious fruit 
as this would melt them all away. I have not tasted such 
fruit— no ! not even in Hampshire — since I was a boy ; and, 
to boys, I fancy, all fruit is good. I remember eating sloes 
and crabs with a relish. Do you remember the matted-up 
currant-bushes, Margaret, at the corner of the west- wall at 
the garden at home ? ” 

Did she not ? Did she not remember every weather- 
stain on the old stone wall ; the grey and yellow lichens that 

2 55 


North and South 

marked it like a map ; the little crane’s-bill that grew in the 
crevices ! She had been shaken by the events of the last 
two days ; her whole life just now was a strain upon her 
fortitude ; and, somehow, these careless words of her father’s, 
touching on the remembrance of the sunny times of old, 
made her start up, and, dropping her sewing on the ground, 
she went hastily out of the room into her own little chamber. 
She had hardly given way to the first choking sob, when she 
became aware of Dixon standing at her drawers, and 
evidently searching for something. 

“ Bless me, miss ! How you startled me ! Missus is 
not worse, is she ? Is anything the matter? ” 

“No, nothing. Only I’m silly, Dixon, and want a glass 
of water. What are you looking for ? I keep my muslins 
in that drawer.” 

Dixon did not speak, but went on rummaging. The 
scent of lavender came out and perfumed the room. 

At last Dixon found what she wanted; what it was 
Margaret could not see. Dixon faced round, and spoke to 
her — 

“Now I don’t like telling you what I wanted, because 
you’ve fretting enough to go through, and I know you’ll fret 
about this. I meant to have kept it from you till night, may 
be, or such times as that.” 

“ What is the matter ? Pray, tell me, Dixon, at once.” 

“ That young woman you go to see — Higgins I mean.” 

“ Well?” 

“ Well ! she died this morning, and her sister is here — 
come to beg a strange thing. It seems, the young woman 
who died had a fancy for being buried in something of yours, 
and so the sister’s come to ask for it — and I was looking for 
a nightcap that wasn’t too good to give away.” 

“ Oh ! let me find one,” said Margaret, in the midst of 
her tears. “ Poor Bessy ! I never thought I should not see 
her again.” 

“ Why, that’s another thing. This girl downstairs 
wanted me to ask you, if you would like to see her.” 

256 


Fruit-piece 

“ But she’s dead ! ” said Margaret, turning a little pale. 
“ I never saw a dead person. No ! I would rather not.” 

“ I should never have asked you if you hadn’t come in. 
I told her you wouldn’t.” 

“ I will go down and speak to her,” said Margaret, afraid 
lest Dixon’s harshness of manner might wound the poor 
girl. So, taking the cap in her hand, she went to the 
kitchen. Mary’s face was all swollen with crying, and she 
burst out afresh when she saw Margaret. 

“ Oh, ma’am, she loved yo’, she loved yo’, she did 
indeed ! ” And for a long time, Margaret could not get her 
to say anything more than this. At last, her sympathy, and 
Dixon’s scolding, forced out a few facts. Nicholas Higgins 
had gone out in the morning, leaving Bessy as well as on 
the day before. But in an hour she was taken worse ; some 
neighbour ran to the room where Mary was working ; they 
did not know where to find her father ; Mary had only come 
in a few minutes before she died. 

“ It were a day or two ago she axed to be buried in 
somewhat o’ youm. She were never tired o’ talking o’ yo’. 
She used to say yo’ were the prettiest thing she’d ever 
clapped eyes on. She loved yo’ dearly. Her last words 
were ‘ Give her my affectionate respects ; and keep father 
fro’ drink.’ Yo’ll come and see her, ma’am. She would ha’ 
thought it a great compliment, I know.” 

Margaret shrank a little from answering. 

“ Yes, perhaps I may. Yes, I will. I’ll come before 
tea. But where’s your father, Mary ? ” 

Mary shook her head, and stood up to be going. 

“ Miss Hale,” said Dixon, in a low voice, “ where’s the 
use o’ your going to see the poor thing laid out ? I’d never 
say a word against it, if it could do the girl any good ; and 
I wouldn’t mind a bit going myself, if that would satisfy her. 
They’ve just a notion, these common folks, of it’s being a 
respect to the departed. Here,” said she, turning sharply 
round, “ I’ll come and see your sister. Miss Hale is busy, 
and she can’t come, or else she would.” 

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North and South 

The girl looked wistfully at Margaret. Dixon’s coming 
might be a compliment, but it was not the same thing to the 
poor sister, who had had her little pangs of jealousy, during 
Bessy’s lifetime, at the intimacy between her and the young 
lady. 

“No, Dixon ! ” said Margaret, with decision. “ I will go. 
Mary, you shall see me this afternoon.” And, for fear of 
her own cowardice, she went away, in order to take from 
herself any chance of changing her determination. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 

COMFORT IN SORROW 

“ Through cross to crown ! — And though thy spirit’s life 
Trials untold assail with giant strength, 

Good cheer ! good cheer ! Soon ends the bitter strife, 

And thou shalt reign in peace with Christ at length.” 

Kosegarten. 

“ Ay sooth, we feel too strong in weal, to need Thee on that road ; 

But woe being come, the soul is dumb that crieth not on ‘ God.’ ” 

Mrs. Browning. 

That afternoon she walked swiftly to the Higginses’ house. 
Mary was looking out for her, with a half-distrustful face. 
Margaret smiled into her eyes to re-assure her. They passed 
quickly through the house-place, upstairs, and into the quiet 
presence of the dead. Then Margaret was glad that she had 
come. The face, often so weary with pain, so restless with 
troublous thoughts, had now the faint soft smile of eternal 
rest upon it. The slow tears gathered into Margaret’s eyes, 
but a deep calm entered into her soul. And that was death ! 
It looked more peaceful than life. All beautiful scriptures 
came into her mind. “ They rest from their labours.” “ The 
weary are at rest.” “ He giveth His beloved sleep.” 

Slowly, slowly Margaret turned away from the bed. 
258 


Comfort in Sorrow 


Mary was humbly sobbing in the background. They went 
downstairs without a word. 

Resting bis band upon the house-table, Nicholas Higgins 
stood in the midst of the floor ; bis great eyes startled open 
by the news he bad beard, as he came along the court, from 
many busy tongues. His eyes were dry and fierce ; studying 
the reality of her death : bringing himself to understand that 
her place should know her no more. For she bad been 
sickly, dying so long, that be bad persuaded himself she 
would not die ; that she would “ pull through.” 

Margaret felt as if she bad no business to be there, 
familiarly acquainting herself with the surroundings of death 
which be, the father, bad only just learnt. There bad been 
a pause of an instant on the steep crooked stair, when she 
first saw him ; but now she tried to steal past bis abstracted 
gaze, and to leave him in the solemn circle of bis household 
misery. 

Mary sat down on the first chair she came to, and 
throwing her apron over her bead, began to cry. 

The noise appeared to rouse him. He took sudden hold 
of Margaret’s arm, and held her till he could gather words 
to speak. His throat seemed dry ; they came up thick, and 
choked, and hoarse — 

“ Were yo’ with her? Did yo’ see her die ? ” 

“ No ! ” replied Margaret, standing still with the utmost 
patience, now she found herself perceived. It was some 
time before he spoke again, but he kept his hold on her arm. 

“ All men must die,” said he at last, with a strange sort 
of gravity, which first suggested to Margaret the idea that 
he had been drinking — not enough to intoxicate himself, but 
enough to make his thoughts bewildered. “ But she were 
younger than me.” Still he pondered over the event, not 
looking at Margaret, though he grasped her tight. Suddenly, 
he looked up at her with a wild searching inquiry in his 
glance. “ Yo’re sure and certain she’s dead — not in a dwam, 
a faint? — she’s been so before, often.” 

“ She is dead,” replied Margaret. She felt no fear in 
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North and South 

speaking to him, though he hurt her arm with his gripe, and 
wild gleams came across the stupidity of his eyes. 

“ She is dead ! ” she said. 

He looked at her still with that searching look, which 
seemed to fade out of his eyes as he gazed. Then he 
suddenly let go his hold of Margaret, and, throwing his body 
half across the table, he shook it and every piece of furniture 
in the room, with his violent sobs. Mary came trembling 
towards him. 

“ Get thee gone ! — get thee gone ! ” he cried, striking 
wildly and blindly at her. “ What do I care for thee ? ” 
Margaret took her hand and held it softly in hers. He tore 
his hair ; he beat his head against the hard wood ; then he lay 
exhausted and stupid. Still his daughter and Margaret did 
not move. Mary trembled from head to foot. 

At last — it might have been a quarter of an hour, it 
might have been an hour — he lifted himself up. His eyes 
were swollen and bloodshot, and he seemed to have for- 
gotten that any one was by ; he scowled at the watchers 
when he saw them. He shook himself heavily, gave them 
one more sullen look, spoke never a word, but made for the 
door. 

“ Oh, father, father ! ” said Mary, throwing herself upon 
his arm, — “ not to-night ! Any night but to-night. Oh, 
help me ! he’s going out to drink again ! Father, I’ll not 
leave yo’. Yo’ may strike, but I’ll not leave yo\ She told 
me last of all to keep yo’ fro’ drink ! ” 

But Margaret stood in the doorway, silent yet commanding. 
He looked up at her defyingly. 

“ It’s my own house. Stand out o’ the way, wench, or 
I’ll make yo’ ! ” He had shaken off Mary with violence ; he 
looked ready to strike Margaret. But she never moved a 
feature — never took her deep, serious eyes off him. He 
stared back on her with gloomy fierceness. If she had 
stirred hand or foot, he would have thrust her aside with 
even more violence than he had used to his own daughter, 
whose face was bleeding from her fall against a chair. 

260 


Comfort in Sorrow 

“ What are yo’ looking at me in that way for ? ” asked 
he at last, daunted and awed by her severe calm. “ If yo’ 
think for to keep me from going what gait I choose, because 
she loved yo’ — and in my own house, too, where I never 
asked yo’ to come-yo’re mista’en. It’s very hard upon a 
man that he can’t go to the only comfort left.” 

Margaret felt that he acknowledged her power. What 
could she do next ? He had seated himself on a chair, close 
to the door ; half-conquered, half -resenting ; intending to go 
out as soon as she left her position, but unwilling to use the 
violence he had threatened not five minutes before. Margaret 
laid her hand on his arm. 

“ Come with me,” she said. “ Come and see her ! ” 

The voice in which she spoke was very low and solemn ; 
but there was no fear or doubt expressed in it, either of 
him or of his compliance. He sullenly rose up. He stood 
uncertain, with dogged irresolution upon his face. She 
waited him there ; quietly and patiently waited for his time 
to move. He had a strange pleasure in making her wait ; 
but at last he moved towards the stairs. 

She and he stood by the corpse. 

“Her last words to Mary were, ‘Keep my father fro’ 
drink.’ ” 

“ It canna hurt her now,” muttered he. “ Nought can 
hurt her now.” Then, raising his voice to a wailing cry, he 
went on — “ We may quarrel and fall out — we may make peace 
and be friends — we may clem to skin and bone — and nought 
o’ all our griefs will ever touch her more. Hoo’s had her 
portion on ’em. What wi’ hard work first, and sickness at 
last, hoo led the life of a dog. And to die without knowing 
one good piece o’ rejoicing in all her days! Nay, wench, 
whatever hoo said, hoo can know nought about it now, 
and I mun ha’ a sup o’ drink just to steady me again 
sorrow.” 

“No,” said Margaret, softening with his softened manner. 
“ You shall not. If her life has been what you say, at any 
rate she did not fear death as some do. Oh, you should 

261 


North and South 

have heard her speak of the life to come — the life hidden 
with God, that she is now gone to.” 

He shook his head, glancing sideways up at Margaret as 
he did so. His pale, haggard face struck her painfully. 

“ You are sorely tried. Where have you been all day — 
not at work ? ” 

“ Not at work, sure enough,” said he, with a short, grim 
laugh. “Not at what you call work. I were at the Com- 
mittee, till I were sickened out wi’ trying to make fools hear 
reason. I were fetched to Boucher’s wife afore seven this 
morning. She’s bed-fast ; but she were raving and raging to 
know where her dunder-headed brute of a chap was ; as if I’d 
to keep him — as if he were fit to be ruled by me. The d — d 
fool, who has put his foot in all our plans ! And I’ve walked 
my feet sore wi’ going about for to see men who wouldn’t be 
seen, now the law is raised again us. And I were sore- 
hearted, too, which is worse than sore-footed ; and if I did 
see a friend who ossed to treat me, I never knew hoo lay 
a-dying here. Bess, lass, thou’d believe me, thou wouldst — 
wouldst thou ? ” turning to the poor dumb form with wild 
appeal. 

“ I am sure,” said Margaret, “ I am sure you did not 
know : it was quite sudden. But now, you see, it would be 
different ; you do know ; you do see her lying there ; you 
hear what she said with her last breath. You will not go ? ” 

No answer. In fact, where was he to look for comfort ? 

“ Come home with me,” said she at last, with a bold 
venture, half trembling at her own proposal as she made it. 
“ At least you shall have some comfortable food, which I’m 
sure you need.” 

“ Yo’r father’s a parson ? ” asked he, with a sudden turn 
in his ideas. 

“ He was,” said Margaret shortly. 

“ I’ll go and take a dish o’ tea with him, since yo’ve 
asked me. I’ve many a thing I often wished to say to a 
parson ; and I’m not particular as to whether he’s preaching 
now, or not.” 


262 


Comfort in Sorrow 

Margaret was perplexed ; his drinking tea with her father, 
who would be totally unprepared for his visitor — her mother 
so ill — seemed utterly out of the question; and yet, if she 
drew back now, it would be worse than ever — sure to drive 
him to the gin-shop. She thought that, if she could only get 
him to their own house, it was so great a step gained that 
she would trust to the chapter of accidents for the next. 

“ Good-bye, ou’d wench ! We’ve parted company at last, 
we have ! But thou’st been a blessin’ to thy father ever sin’ 
thou wert born. Bless thy white lips, lass — they’ve a smile 
on ’em now ! and I’m glad to see it once again, though I’m 
lone and forlorn for evermore.” 

He stooped down and fondly kissed his daughter ; covered 
up her face, and turned to follow Margaret. She had hastily 
gone downstairs to tell Mary of the arrangement ; to say it 
was the only way she could think of to keep him from the. 
gin-palace ; to urge Mary to come too, for her heart smote 
her at the idea of leaving the poor affectionate girl alone. 
But Mary had friends among the neighbours, she said, who 
would come in and sit a bit with her ; it was all right ; but 
father 

He was there by them or she would have spoken more. 
He had shaken off his emotion, as if be was ashamed of 
having ever given way to it ; and had even o’erleaped him- 
self so much that he assumed a sort of bitter mirth, like the 
crackling of thorns under a pot. 

“ I’m going to take my tea wi’ her father, I am ! ” 

But he slouched his cap low down over his brow as he 
went out into the street, and looked neither to the right nor 
to the left, while he tramped along by Margaret’s side; he 
feared being upset by the words, still more the looks, of 
sympathising neighbours. So he and Margaret walked in 
silence. 

As he got near the street in which he knew she lived, he 
looked down at his clothes, his hands, and shoes. 

“ I should m’appen ha’ cleaned mysel’, first ? ” 

It certainly would have been desirable; but Margaret 
263 


North and South 

assured him he should be allowed to go into the yard, and 
have soap and towel provided : she could not let him slip 
out of her hands just then. 

While he followed the house- servant along the passage, 
and through the kitchen, stepping cautiously on every dark 
mark in the pattern of the oil-cloth, in order to conceal his 
dirty foot-prints, Margaret ran upstairs. She met Dixon on 
the landing. 

“ How is mamma ! — where is papa ? ” 

Missus was tired, and gone into her own room. She had 
wanted ’to go to bed, but Dixon had persuaded her to lie 
down on the sofa, and have her tea brought to her there ; 
it would be better than getting restless by being too long 
in bed. 

So far, so good. But where was Mr. Hale? In the 
drawing-room. Margaret went in half breathless with the 
hurried story she had to tell. Of course she told it incom- 
pletely ; and her father was rather “ taken aback ” by the 
idea of the drunken weaver awaiting him in his quiet study, 
with whom he was expected to drink tea, and on whose 
behalf Margaret was anxiously pleading. The meek, kind- 
hearted Mr. Hale would have readily tried to console him in 
his grief ; but, unluckily, the point Margaret dwelt upon most 
forcibly was the fact of his having been drinking, and her 
having brought him home with her as a last expedient to 
keep him from the gin-shop. One little event had come out 
of another so naturally that Margaret was hardly conscious 
of what she had done, till she saw the slight look of repug- 
nance on her father's face. 

“ Oh, papa ! he really is a man you will not dislike — if 
you won’t be shocked to begin with.” 

“ But, Margaret, to bring a drunken man home — and 
your mother so ill ! ” 

Margaret’s countenance fell. “Iam sorry, papa. He is 
very quiet — he is not tipsy at all. He was only rather 
strange at first ; but that might be the shock of poor Bessy’s 
death.” Margaret’s eyes filled with tears. Mr. Hale took 

264 


Comfort in Sorrow 

hold of her sweet pleading face in both his hands, and kissed 
her forehead. 

“ It is all right, dear. I’ll go and make him as comfort- 
able as I can, and do yon attend to your mother. Only, if 
you can come in and make a third in the study, I shall be 
glad.” 

“ Oh, yes — thank you.” But as Mr. Hale was leaving 
the room she ran after him — 

“ Papa — you must not wonder at what he says : he’s 

an I mean he does not believe in much of what 

we do.” 

“ Oh dear ! a drunken infidel weaver ! ” said Mr. Hale to 
himself, in dismay. But to Margaret he only said, “ If your 
mother goes to sleep, be sure you come directly.” 

Margaret went into her mother’s room. Mrs. Hale lifted 
herself up from a doze. 

“ When did you write to Frederick, Margaret ? Yester- 
day, or the day before ? ” 

“ Yesterday, mamma.” 

“ Yesterday, and the letter went ? ” 

“ Yes. I took it myself.” 

“ Oh, Margaret, I’m so afraid of his coming ! If he should 
be recognised ! If he should be taken ! If he should be 
executed, after all these years that he has kept away and 
lived in safety ! I keep falling asleep and dreaming that he 
is caught and being tried.” 

“ Oh, mamma, don’t be afraid. There will be some risk 
no doubt; but we will lessen it as much as ever we can. 
And it is so little ! Now, if we were at Helstone, there 
would be twenty — a hundred times as much. There, every- 
body would remember him ; and, if there was a stranger 
known to be in the house, they would be sure to guess it was 
Frederick ; while here, nobody knows or cares enough to 
notice what we do. Dixon will keep the door like a dragon 
— won’t you, Dixon ? — while he is here.” 

“ They’ll be clever if they come in past me ! ” said Dixon, 
showing her teeth at the bare idea. 

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“ And he need not go out, except in the dusk, poor 
fellow ! ” 

“ Poor fellow ! ” echoed Mrs. Hale. “ But I almost wish 
you had not written. Would it be too late to stop him if 
you wrote again, Margaret ? ” 

“ I’m afraid it would, mamma,” said Margaret, remem- 
bering the urgency with which she had entreated him to come 
directly, if he wished to see his mother alive. 

“ I always dislike that doing things in such a hurry,” 
said Mrs. Hale. 

Margaret was silent. 

“ Come now, ma’am,” said Dixon, with a kind of cheerful 
authority ; “ you know seeing Master Frederick is just the 
very thing of all others you’re longing for. And I’m glad 
Miss Margaret wrote off straight, without shilly-shallying. 
I had a great mind to do it myself. And we’ll keep him 
snug, depend upon it. There’s only Martha in the house 
that would not do a good deal to save him on a pinch ; and 
I’ve been thinking she might go and see her mother just at 
that very time. She’s been saying once or twice she should 
like to go, for her mother has had a stroke since she came 
here; only she didn’t like to ask. But I’ll see about her 
being safe off, as soon as we know when he comes, God 
bless him ! So take your tea, ma’am, in comfort, and trust 
to me.” 

Mrs. Hale did trust in Dixon more than in Margaret. 
Dixon’s words quieted her for the time. Margaret poured 
out the tea in silence, trying to think of something agreeable 
to say ; but her thoughts made answer something like Daniel 
O’Rourke, when the man-in-the-moon asked him to get off 
his reaping-hook, “ The more you ax us, the more we won’t 
stir.” The more she tried to think of something — anything 
besides the danger to which Frederick would be exposed — 
the more closely her imagination clung to the unfortunate 
idea presented to her. Her mother prattled with Dixon, and 
seemed to have utterly forgotten the possibility of Frederick 
being tried and executed — utterly forgotten that at her wish, if 

266 


Comfort in Sorrow 

by Margaret’s deed, he was summoned into this danger. Her 
mother was one of those who throw out terrible possibilities, 
miserable probabilities, unfortunate chances of all kinds, as a 
rocket throws out sparks ; but if the sparks light on some 
combustible matter, they smoulder first, and burst out into 
a frightful flame at last. Margaret was glad when, her filial 
duties gently and carefully performed, she could go down 
into the study. She wondered how her father and Higgins 
had got on. 

In the first place, the decorous, kind-hearted, simple, old- 
fashioned gentleman had unconsciously called out, by his 
own refinement and courteousness of manner, all the latent 
courtesy in the other. 

Mr. Hale treated all his fellow-creatures alike : it never 
entered into his head to make any difference because of their 
rank. He placed a chair for Nicholas ; stood up till he, at 
Mr. Hale’s request, took a seat ; and called him, invariably, 
“ Mr. Higgins,” instead of the curt “ Nicholas ” or “ Higgins,” 
to which the “ drunken infidel weaver ” had been accustomed. 
But Nicholas was neither an habitual drunkard nor a 
thorough infidel. He drank to drown care, as he would 
have himself expressed it : and he was infidel so far as he 
had never yet found any form of faith to which he could 
attach himself, heart and soul. 

Margaret was a little surprised, and very much pleased, 
when she found her father and Higgins in earnest conver- 
sation — each speaking with gentle politeness to the other, 
however their opinions might clash. Nicholas — clean, tidied 
(if only at the pump-trough), and quiet spoken — was a new 
creature to her, who had only seen him in the rough in- 
dependence of his own hearthstone. He had “ slicked ” his 
hair down with the fresh water ; he had adjusted his neck- 
handkerchief, and borrowed an odd candle-end to polish his 
clogs with ; and there he sat, enforcing some opinion on her 
father, with a strong Darkshire accent, it is true, but with 
a lowered voice, and a good, earnest composure on his 
face. Her father, too, was interested in what his companion 

267 


North and South 

was saying. He looked round as she came in, smiled, and 
quietly gave her his chair; and then sat down afresh as 
quickly as possible, and with a little bow of apology to his 
guest for the interruption. Higgins nodded to her as a sign 
of greeting ; and she softly adjusted her working materials 
on the table, and prepared to listen. 

“As I was a-saying, sir, I reckon yo’d not ha’ much 
belief in yo’ if yo’ lived here — if yo’d been bred here. I ax 
your pardon if I use wrong words ; but what I mean by 
belief, just now, is a-thinking on sayings and maxims and 
promises made by folk yo’ never saw, about the things and 
the life yo’ never saw, nor no one else. Now, yo’ say these 
are true things, and true sayings, and a true life. I just say, 
where’s the proof ? There’s many and many a one wiser, 
and scores better learned than I am around me — folk who’ve 
had time to think on these things — while my time has had to 
be gi’en up to getting my bread. Well, I sees these people. 
Their lives is pretty much open to me. They’re real folk. 
They don’t believe i’ the Bible — not they. They may say 
they do, for form’s sake ; but, Lord, sir, d’ye think their first 
cry i’ th’ morning is, ‘ What shall I do to get hold on eternal 
life ? ’ or ‘ What shall I do to fill my purse this blessed day ? 
Where shall I go ? What bargains shall I strike ? ’ The 
purse and the gold and the notes is real things ; things as 
can be felt and touched ; themls realities ; and eternal life 
is all a talk, very fit for — I ax your pardon, sir ; yo’r a parson 
out o’ work, I believe. Well ! I’ll never speak disrespectful 
of a man in the same fix as I’m in mysel’. But I’ll just ax 
yo’ another question, sir, and I dunnot want yo’ to answer it, 
only to put it in yo’r pipe, and smoke it, afore yo’ go for to 
set down us, who only believe in what we see, as fools and 
noddies. If salvation, and life to come, and what not, was 
true — not in men’s words, but in men’s hearts’ core — dun yo’ 
not think they’d din us wi’ it as they do wi’ political ’conomy ? 
They’re mighty anxious to come round us wi’ that piece o’ 
wisdom ; but t’other would be a greater convarsion, if it were 
true.” 


268 


Comfort in Sorrow 

“ But the masters have nothing to do with your religion. 
All that they are connected with you in is trade — so they 
think — and all that it concerns them, therefore to rectify 
your opinions in is the science of trade.” 

“ I’m glad, sir,” said Higgins, with a curious wink of his 
eye, “ that yo’ put in, ‘ so they think.’ I’d ha’ thought yo’ 
a hypocrite, I’m afeared, if yo’ hadn’t, for all yo’r a parson, 
or rayther because yo’r a parson. Yo’ see, if yo’d spoken o’ 
religion as a thing that, if it was true, it didn’t concern all 
men to press on all men’s attention, above everything else in 
this ’varsal earth, I should ha’ thought yo’ a knave for to be 
a parson ; and I’d rather think yo’ a fool than a knave. No 
offence, I hope, sir.” 

“ None at all. You consider me mistaken, and I consider 
you far more fatally mistaken. I don’t expect to convince 
you in a day — not in one conversation ; but let us know 
each other, and speak freely to each other about these things, 
and the truth will prevail. I should not believe in God if I 
did not believe that. Mr. Higgins, I trust, whatever else 
you have given up, you believe ” — (Mr. Hale’s voice dropped 
low in reverence) — “ you believe in Him ? ” 

Nicholas Higgins suddenly stood straight, stiff up. 
Margaret started to her feet, — for she thought, by the 
working of his face, he was going into convulsions. Mr. 
Hale looked at her dismayed. At last Higgins found 
words — 

“ Man ! I could fell yo’ to the ground for tempting me. 
Whatten business have yo’ to try me wi’ your doubts ? Think 
o’ her lying theere, after the life hoo’s led ; and think then 
how yo’d deny me the one sole comfort left — that there 
is a God, and that He set her her life. I dunnot believe 
she’ll ever live again,” said he, sitting down, and drearily 
going on, as if to the unsympathising fire. “I dunnot 
believe in any other life than this, in which she dreed such 
trouble, and had such never-ending care; and I cannot 
bear to think it were all a set o’ chances, that might 
ha’ been altered wi’ a breath o’ wind. There’s many a time 

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North and South 

when I’ve thought I didna believe in God, but I’ve never put 
it fair out before me in words, as many men do. I may ha’ 
laughed at those who did, to brave it out like — but I have 
looked round at after, to see if He heard me, if so be there 
was a He ; but to-day, when I’m left desolate, I wunnot 
listen to yo’ wi’ yo’r questions, and yo’r doubts. There’s but 
one thing steady and quiet i’ all this reeling world, and, 
reason or no reason, I’ll cling to that. It’s a’ very well for 
happy folk ” 

Margaret touched his arm very softly. She had not 
spoken before, nor had he heard her rise. 

“ Nicholas, we do not want to reason ; you misunderstand 
my father. We do not reason — we believe ; and so do you. 
It is the one sole comfort in such times.” 

He turned round and caught her hand. “ Ay ! it is, it is ” 
— (brushing away the tears with the back of his hand). — 
“ But yo’ know, she’s lying dead at home ; and I’m welly 
dazed wi’ sorrow, and at times I hardly know what I’m 
saying. It’s as if speeches folk ha’ made — clever and smart 
things as I’ve thought at the time — come up now my heart’s 
welly brossen. Th’ strike’s failed as well ; dun yo’ know 
that, miss ? I were coming whoam to ask her, like a beggar 
as I am, for a bit o’ comfort i’ that trouble ; and I were 
knocked down by one who telled me she were dead — just 
dead. That were all ; but that were enough for me.” 

Mr. Hale blew his nose, and got up to snuff the candles 
in order to conceal his emotion. “He’s not an infidel, 
Margaret ; how could you say so ? ” muttered he reproach- 
fully. “I’ve a good mind to read him the fourteenth chapter 
of Job.” 

“ Not yet, papa, I think. Perhaps not at all. Let us ask 
him about the strike, and give him all the sympathy he 
needs, and hoped to have from poor Bessy.” 

So they questioned and listened. The workmen’s calcu- 
lations were based (like too many of the masters’) on false 
premises. They reckoned on their fellow-men as if they 
possessed the calculable powers of machines, no more, no 

270 


Comfort in Sorrow 

less ; no allowance for human passions getting the better of 
reason, as in the case of Boucher and the rioters ; and be- 
lieving that the representation of their injuries would have 
the same effect on strangers far away, as the injuries (fancied 
or real) had upon themselves. They were consequently sur- 
prised and indignant at the poor Irish, who had allowed 
themselves to be imported and brought over to take their 
places. This indignation was tempered, in some degree, by 
contempt for “ them Irishers,” and by pleasure at the idea 
of the bungling way in which they would set to work, and 
perplex their new masters with their ignorance and stupidity, 
strange exaggerated stories of which were already spreading 
through the town. But the most cruel cut of all was that 
of the Milton workmen, who had defied and disobeyed the 
commands of the Union to keep the peace, whatever came ; 
who had originated discord in the camp, and spread the 
panic of the law being arrayed against them. 

“ And so the strike is at an end,” said Margaret. 

“ Ay, miss. It’s save as save can. Th’ factory doors 
will need open wide to-morrow to let in all who’ll be axing 
for work ; if it’s only just to show they’d nought to do wi’ a 
measure, which if we’d been made o’ th’ right stuff would ha’ 
brought wages up to a point they’n not been at this ten year.” 

“ You’ll get work, shan’t you ? ” asked Margaret. “ You’re 
a famous workman, are not you ? ” 

“ Hamper ’ll let me work at his mill, when he cuts off 
his right hand — not before, and not after,” said Nicholas 
quietly. Margaret was silenced and sad. 

“ About the wages,” said Mr. Hale. “ You’ll not he 
offended, but I think you make some sad mistakes. I should 
like to read you some remarks in a book I have.” He got up 
and went to his book-shelves. 

“ Yo’ needn’t trouble yoursel’, sir,” said Nicholas. 
“ Their book-stuff goes in at one ear and out at t’other. I 
can make nought on’t. Afore Hamper and me had this 
split, th’ overlooker telled him I were stirring up th’ men to 
ask for higher wages ; and Hamper met me one day in th’ 

271 


North and South 

yard. He’d a thin book i’ his hand, and says he, * Higgins, 
I’m told you’re one of those damned fools that think you can 
get higher wages for asking for ’em ; ay, and keep ’em up too, 
when you’ve forced ’em up. Now, I’ll give yo’ a chance and 
try if yo’ve any sense in yo’. Here’s a book written by a 
friend o’ mine, and if yo’ll read it yo’ll see how wages find 
their own level, without either masters or men having aught 
to do with them ; except the men cut their own throats wi’ 
striking, like the confounded noodles they are.’ Well, now, 
sir, I put it to yo’, being a parson, and having been in th’ 
preaching line, and having had to try and bring folk o’er to 
what yo’ thought was a right way o’ thinking — did yo’ begin 
by calling ’em fools and such like, or didn’t yo’ rayther give 
’em such kind words at first, to make ’em ready for to listen 
and be convinced, if they could ; and in yo’r preaching, did 
yo’ stop every now and then, and say, half to them and half 
to yo’rsel’, ‘ But yo’r such a pack o’ fools, that I’ve a strong 
notion it’s no use my trying to put sense into yo’ ? ’ I 
were not i’ th’ best state, I’ll own, for taking in what 
Hamper’s friend had to say— -I were so vexed at the way it 
were put to me ; — but I thought, ‘ Come, I’ll see what these 
chaps has got to say, and try if it’s them or me as is th’ 
noodle.’ So I took th’ book and tugged at it ; but, Lord 
bless yo’, it went on about capital and labour, and labour and 
capital, till it fair sent me off to sleep. I ne’er could rightly 
fix i’ my mind which was which ; and it spoke on ’em as if 
they was vartues or vices ; and what I wanted for to know 
were the rights o’ men, whether they were rich or poor — so 
be they only were men.” 

“ But for all that,” said Mr. Hale, “and granting to the 
full the offensiveness, the folly, the unchristianness of Mr. 
Hamper’s way of speaking to you in recommending his 
friend’s book : yet, if it told you what he said it did, that wages 
find their own level, and that the most successful strike can 
only force them up for a moment, to sink in far greater pro- 
portion afterwards, in consequence of that very strike, the 
book would have told you the truth.” 

272 




Comfort in Sorrow 

“ Well, sir,” said Higgins, rather doggedly ; “ it might, or 
it might not. There’s two opinions go to settling that point. 
But suppose it was truth double strong, it were no truth to 
me if I couldna take it in. I dare say there’s truth in yon 
Latin books on your shelves ; but it’s gibberish and not truth 
to me, unless I know the meaning o’ the words. If yo’, sir, 
or any other knowledgable, patient man come to me, and says 
he’ll larn me what the words mean, and not blow me up if 
I’m a bit stupid, or forget how one thing hangs on another — 
why, in time I may get to see the truth of it ; or I may not. 
I’ll not be bound to say I shall end in thinking the same as 
any man. And I’m not one who thinks truth can be shaped 
out in words, all neat and clean, as th’ men at th’ foundry 
cut out sheet-iron. Same bones won’t go down wi’ every 
one. It’ll stick here i’ this man’s throat, and there i’ t’others. 
Let alone that, when down, it may be too strong for this one, 
too weak for that. Folk who sets up to doctor th’ world wi’ 
their truth, mun suit different for different minds ; and be a 
bit tender in th’ way of giving it too, or the poor sick fools 
may spit it out ’i their faces. Now Hamper first gi’es me a 
box on my ear, and then he throws his big bolus at me, and 
says he reckons it’ll do me no good, I’m such a fool, but 
there it is.” 

“ I wish some of the kindest and wisest of the masters 
would meet some of you men and have a good talk on these 
things ; it would, surely, be the best way of getting over your 
difficulties, which, I do believe, arise from your ignorance- 
excuse me, Mr. Higgins — on subjects which it is for the 
mutual interests of both masters and men should be well 
understood by both. I wonder ” — (half to his daughter) — 
“if Mr. Thornton might not be induced to do such a 
thing ? ” 

“ Remember, papa,” said she in a very low voice, “ what 
he said one day — about governments, you know.” She was 
unwilling to make any clearer allusion to the conversation 
they had held on the mode of governing work-people— by 
giving men intelligence enough to rule themselves, or by a 

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North and South 

wise despotism on the part of the master — for she saw that 
Higgins had caught Mr. Thornton’s name, if not the whole 
of the speech ; indeed, he began to speak of him. 

“ Thornton ! He’s the chap as wrote off at once for 
these Irishers ; and led to th’ riot that ruined th’ strike. 
Even Hamper, wi’ all his bullying, would ha’ waited a while 
— but it’s a word and a blow wi’ Thornton. And, now, when 
th’ Union would ha’ thanked him for following up th’ chase 
after Boucher, and them chaps as went right again our com- 
mands, it’s Thornton who steps forrard and coolly says that, 
as th’ strike’s at an end, he, as party injured, doesn’t want to 
press the charge again the rioters. I thought he’d ha’ had 
more pluck. I thought he’d ha’ carried his point, and had his 
revenge in an open way ; but says he (one in court telled me 
his very words), ‘ They are well known ; they will find the 
natural punishment of their conduct in the difficulty they 
will meet wi’ in getting employment. That will be severe 
enough.’ I only wish they’d cotch’d Boucher, and had him 
up before Hamper. I see th’ oud tiger setting on him ! 
would he ha’ let him off? Not he ! ” 

“ Mr. Thornton was right,” said Margaret. “You are 
angry against Boucher, Nicholas ; or else you would be the 
first to see, that, where the natural punishment would be 
severe enough for the offence, any further punishment would 
be something like revenge.” 

“ My daughter is no great friend of Mr. Thornton’s,” said 
Mr. Hale, smiling at Margaret, while she, as red as any 
carnation, began to work with double diligence ; “ but I 
believe what she says is the truth. I like him for it.” 

“Well, sir, this strike has been a weary piece o’ business 
to me ; and yo’ll not wonder if I’m a bit put out wi’ seeing it 
fail, just for a few men who would na suffer in silence, and 
hou’d out, brave and firm.” 

“ You forget ! ” said Margaret. “ I don’t know much of 
Boucher ; but the only time I saw him it was not his own 
sufferings he spoke of, but those of his sick wife — his little 
children.” 


274 


Comfort in Sorrow 

“ True ! but he were not made of iron himsel’. He’d ha’ 
cried out for his own sorrows next. He were not one to 
bear.” 

“ How came he into the Union? ” asked Margaret inno- 
cently. “You don’t seem to have much respect for him ; 
nor gained much good from having him in.” 

Higgins’s brow clouded. He was silent for a minute or 
two. Then he said, shortly enough — 

“ It’s not for me to speak o’ th’ Union. What they does 
they does. Them that is of a trade mun hang together ; and, 
if they’re not willing to take their chance along wi’ th’ rest, 
th’ Union has ways and means.” 

Mr. Hale saw that Higgins was vexed at the turn the 
conversation had taken, and was silent. Not so Margaret, 
though she saw Higgins’s feeling as clearly as he did. By 
instinct she felt that, if he could but be brought to express 
himself in plain words, something clear would be gained on 
which to argue for the right and the just. 

“ And what are the Union’s ways and means ? ’* 

He looked up at her, as if on the point of dogged 
resistance to her wish for information. But her calm face, 
fixed on his, patient and trustful, compelled him to answer. 

“ Well ! If a man doesn’t belong to th’ Union, them as 
works next looms has orders not to speak to him— if he’s 
sorry or ill it’s a’ the same ; he’s out o’ bounds ; he’s none 
o’ us ; he comes among us, he works among us, but he's 
none o’ us. I’ some places them’s fined who speaks to him* 
Yo’ try that, miss ; try living a year or two among them as 
looks away if yo’ look at ’em ; try working within two yards 
o’ crowds o’ men, who, yo’ know, have a grinding grudge at 
yo’ in their hearts — to whom if yo’ say yo’r glad, not an eye 
brightens, nor a lip moves, — to whom, if your heart’s heavy, 
yo’ can never say nought, because they’ll ne’er take notice 
on your sighs or sad looks (and a man’s no man who 11 
groan out loud ’bout folk asking him what’s the matter ?) — 
just yo’ try that, miss — ten hours for three hundred days, 
and vo’ll know a bit what th’ Union is.” 

275 


North and South 

“ Why ! ” said Margaret, “ what tyranny this is ! Nay, 
Higgins, I don’t care one straw for your anger. I know 
you can’t be angry with me if you would, and I must tell 
you the truth : that I never read, in all the history I have 
read, of a more slow, lingering torture than this. And you 
belong to the Union ! And you talk of the tyranny of the 
masters ! ” 

“ Nay,” said Higgins, “ yo’ may say what yo’ like ! The 
dead stand between yo’ and every angry word o’ mine. 
D’ ye think I forget who’s lying there , and how hoo loved 
yo’ ? And it’s th’ masters as has made us sin, if th’ Union 
is a sin. Not this generation maybe, but their fathers. 
Their fathers ground our fathers to the very dust ; ground 
us to powder ! Parson ! I reckon, I’ve heerd my mother 
read out a text, ‘ The fathers have eaten sour grapes and th’ 
children’s teeth are set on edge.’ It’s so wi’ them. In those 
days of sore oppression th’ Unions began ; it were a 
necessity. It’s a necessity now, according to me. It’s a 
withstanding of injustice, past, present, or to come. It may 
be like war ; along wi’ it come crimes ; but I think it were a 
greater crime to let it alone. Our only chance is binding 
men together in one common interest; and, if some are 
cowards and some are fools, they mun come along and join 
the great march, whose only strength is in numbers.” 

“ Oh ! ” said Mr. Hale, sighing, “ your Union in itself 
would be beautiful, glorious — it would be Christianity itself- — 
if it were but for an end which affected the good of all, 
instead of that of merely one class as opposed to another.” 

“ I reckon it’s time for me to be going, sir,” said Higgins, 
as the clock struck ten. 

“ Home ? ” said Margaret, very softly. He understood 
her, and took her offered hand. “ Home, miss. Yo’ may 
trust me, tho’ I am one o’ th’ Union.” 

“ I do trust you most thoroughly, Nicholas.” 

“ Stay ! ” said Mr. Hale, hurrying to the bookshelves. 
“ Mr. Higgins ! I’m sure you’ll join us in family prayer? ” 

Higgins looked at Margaret doubtfully. Her grave sweet 
276 


A Ray of Sunshine 

eyes met his ; there was no compulsion, only deep interest 
in them. He did not speak, but he kept his place. 

Margaret the Church woman, her father the Dissenter, 
Higgins the Infidel, knelt down together. It did them no 
harm. 


CHAPTER XXIX 

A RAY OF SUNSHINE 

“ Some wishes crossed my mind and dimly cheered it, 

And one or two poor melancholy pleasures, 

Each in the pale unwarming light of hope, 

Silvering its flimsy wing, flew silent by — 

Moths in the moonbeam ! ” 

Coleridge. 

The next morning brought Margaret a letter from Edith. 
It was affectionate and inconsequent like the writer. But 
the affection was charming to Margaret’s own affectionate 
nature ; and she had grown up with the inconsequence, so 
she did not perceive it. It was as follows : — 

“ Oh, Margaret, it is worth a journey from England to 
see my boy ! He is a superb little fellow, especially in his 
caps, and most especially in the one you sent him, you good, 
dainty-fingered, persevering little lady ! Having made all 
the mothers here envious, I want to show him to somebody 
new, and hear a fresh set of admiring expressions ; perhaps 
that’s all the reason ; perhaps it is not — nay, possibly, there 
is just a little cousinly love mixed with it ; but I do want 
you so much to come here, Margaret ! I’m sure it would be 
the very best thing for Aunt Hale’s health ; everybody here 
Is young and well, and our skies are always blue, and our 
sun always shines, and the band plays deliciously from 
morning till night ; and, to come back to the burden of my 
ditty, my baby always smiles. I am constantly wanting 

277 


North and South 

yon to draw him for me, Margaret. It does not signify 
what he is doing; that very thing is prettiest, gracefulest, 
best. I think I love him a great deal better than my 
husband, who is getting stout, and grumpy - what he calls 
‘ busy.’ No ! he is not. He has just come in with news of 
such a charming picnic, given by the officers of the Hazard , 
at anchor in the bay below. Because he has brought in 
such a pleasant piece of news, I retract all I said just now. 
Did not somebody burn his hand for having said or done 
something he was sorry for? Well, I can’t burn mine, 
because it would hurt me, and the scar would be ugly ; but 
111 retract all I said as fast as I can. Cosmo is quite as 
great a darling as baby, and not a bit stout, and as 
ungrumpy as ever husband was ; only, sometimes he is very, 
very busy. I may say that without love — wifely duty — 
where was I ? — I had something very particular to say, I 
know, once. Oh, it is this — Dearest Margaret ! — you must 
come and see me ; it would do Aunt Hale good, as I said 
before. Get the doctor to order it for her. Tell him that 
it’s the smoke of Milton that does her harm. I have no 
doubt it is that, really. Three months (you must not come 
for less) of this delicious climate — all sunshine, and grapes 
as common as blackberries, would quite cure her. I don’t 
ask my uncle ” — (Here the letter became more constrained, 
and better written ; Mr. Hale was in the comer, like a 
naughty child, for having given up his living) — “ because, 
I dare say, he disapproves of war, and soldiers, and bands of 
music ; at least, I know that many Dissenters are members 
of the Peace Society, and I am afraid he would not like to 
come; but, if he would, dear, pray say that Cosmo and I 
will do our best to make him happy ; and I’ll hide up 
Cosmo’s red coat and sword, and make the band play all 
sorts of grave, solemn things ; or, if they do play pomps and 
vanities, it shall be in double slow time. Dear Margaret, 
if he would like to accompany you and Aunt Hale, we will 
try and make it pleasant, though I’m rather afraid of any 
one who has done something for conscience’ sake. You 

278 


A Ray of Sunshine 

never did, I hope. Tell Aunt Hale not to bring many warm 
clothes, though I’m afraid it will be late in the year before 
you can come. But you have no idea of the heat here ! 
I tried to wear my great beauty Indian shawl at a picnic. 
I kept myself up with proverbs as long as I could ; ‘ Pride 
must abide ’ — and such wholesome pieces of pith ; but it 
was of no use. I was like mamma’s little dog Tiny with an 
elephant’s trappings on ; smothered, hidden, killed with my 
finery ; so I made it into a capital carpet for us all to sit 
down upon. Here’s this boy of mine, Margaret — if you 
don’t pack up your things as soon as you get this letter, and 
come straight off to see him, I shall think you’re descended 
from King Herod ! ” 

Margaret did long for a day of Edith’s life — her freedom 
from care, her cheerful home, her sunny skies. If a wish 
could have transported her, she would have gone off; just 
for one day. She yearned for the strength which such a 
change would give — even for a few hours to be in the midst 
of that bright life, and to feel young again. Not yet twenty ! 
and she had had to bear up against such hard pressure that 
she felt quite old. That was her first feeling after reading 
Edith’s letter. Then she read it again, and, forgetting 
herself, was amused at its likeness to Edith’s self, and was 
laughing merrily over it when Mrs. Hale came into the 
drawing-room, leaning on Dixon’s arm. Margaret flew to 
adjust the pillows. Her mother seemed more than usually 
feeble. 

“ What were you laughing at, Margaret ? ” asked she, as 
soon as she had recovered from the exertion of settling her- 
self on the sofa. 

" A letter I have had this morning from Edith. Shall I 
read it you, mamma ? ” 

She read it aloud ; and for a time it seemed to interest her 
mother, who kept wondering what name Edith had given to 
her boy, and suggesting all probable names, and all possible 
reasons why each and all of these names should be given. 
Into the very midst of these wonders Mr. Thornton came, 

279 


North and South 

bringing another offering of fruit for Mrs. Hale. He could 
not — say rather, he would not — deny himself the chance of 
the pleasure of seeing Margaret. He had no end in this but 
the present gratification. It was the sturdy wilfulness of a 
man usually most reasonable and self-controlled. He 
entered the room, taking in at a glance the fact of Margaret’s 
presence ; but, after the first cold distant bow, he never 
seemed to let his eyes fall on her again. He only stayed to 
present his peaches — to speak some gentle kindly words — 
and then his cold, offended eyes met Margaret’s with a 
grave farewell, as he left the room. She sat down silent 
and pale. 

“Do you know, Margaret, I really begin quite to like 
Mr. Thornton.” 

No answer at first. Then Margaret forced out an icy 
“ Do you? ” 

“ Yes ! I think he is really getting quite polished in his 
manners.” 

Margaret’s voice was more in order now. She replied — 

“ He is very kind and attentive — there is no doubt of 
that.” 

“ I wonder Mrs. Thornton never calls. She must know 
I am ill, because of the water-bed.” 

“ I dare say, she hears how you are from her son.” 

“ Still, I should like to see her. You have so few friends 
here, Margaret.” 

Margaret felt what was in her mother’s thoughts — a 
tender craving to bespeak the kindness of some woman 
towards the daughter that might be soon left motherless. 
But she could not speak. 

“ Do you think,” said Mrs. Hale, after a pause, “ that you 
could go and ask Mrs. Thornton to come and see me ? Only 
once — I dont want to be troublesome.” 

“ I will do anything, if you wish it, mamma — but if — 
but when Frederick comes ” 

“ Ah, to be sure ! we must keep our doors shut — we 
must let no one in. I hardly know whether I dare wish him 

280 


A Ray of Sunshine 

to come or not. Sometimes I think I would rather not. 
Sometimes I have such frightful dreams about him.” 

“ Oh, mamma ! we’ll take good care. I will put my arm 
in the bolt sooner than he should come to the slightest harm. 
Trust the care of him to me, mamma. I will watch over 
him like a lioness over her young.” 

“ When can we hear from him ? ” 

“ Not for a week yet, certainly — perhaps more.” 

“ We must send Martha away in good time. It would 
never do to have her here when he comes, and then send 
her off in a hurry.” 

“ Dixon is sure to remind us of that. I was thinking 
that, if we wanted any help in the house while he is here, 
we could perhaps get Mary Higgins. She is very slack of 
work, and is a good girl, and would take pains to do her 
best, I am sure, and would sleep at home, and need never 
come upstairs, so as to know who is in the house.” 

“ As you please. As Dixon pleases. But, Margaret, 
don’t get to use these horrid Milton words. ‘ Slack of 
work : ’ it is a provincialism. What will your Aunt Shaw 
say, if she hears you use it on her return ? ” 

“ Oh, mamma ! don’t try and make a bugbear of Aunt 
Shaw,” said Margaret, laughing. “ Edith picked up all sorts 
of military slang from Captain Lennox, and Aunt Shaw 
never took any notice of it.” 

“ But yours is factory slang.” 

“ And if I live in a factory town, I must speak factory 
language when I want it. Why, mamma, I could astonish 
you with a great many words you never heard in your life. 
I don’t believe you know what a knobstick is.” 

“ Not I, child. I only know it has a very vulgar sound; 
and I don’t want to hear you using it.” 

“ Very well, dearest mother, I won’t. Only I shall have 
to use a whole explanatory sentence instead.” 

“ I don’t like this Milton,” said Mrs. Hale. “ Edith is 
right enough in saying it’s the smoke that has made me 
so ill.” 


281 


North and South 

Margaret started up as her mother said this. Her father 
had just entered the room, and she was most anxious that 
the faint impression she had seen on his mind that the 
Milton air had injured her mother’s health, should not be 
deepened — should not receive any confirmation. She could 
not tell whether he had heard what Mrs. Hale had said or 
not ; but she began speaking hurriedly of other things, un- 
aware that Mr. Thornton was following him. 

“ Mamma is accusing me of having picked up a great 
deal of vulgarity since we came to Milton.” 

The “vulgarity” Margaret spoke of referred purely to 
the use of local words, and the expression arose out of the 
conversation they had just been holding. But Mr. Thorn- 
ton’s brow darkened ; and Margaret suddenly felt how her 
speech might be misunderstood by him ; so, in the natural 
sweet desire to avoid giving unnecessary pain, she forced 
herself to go forwards with a little greeting, and continue 
what she was saying, addressing herself to him expressly. 

“ Now, Mr. Thornton, though ‘ knobstick ’ has not a very 
pretty sound, is it not expressive ? Could I do without it, 
in speaking of the thing it represents ? If using local words 
is vulgar, I was very vulgar in the Forest — was I not, 
mamma ? ” 

It was unusual with Margaret to obtrude her own 
subject of conversation on others ; but, in this case, she was 
so anxious to prevent Mr. Thornton from feeling annoyance 
at the words he had accidentally overheard, that it was not 
until she had done speaking that she coloured all over with 
consciousness, more especially as Mr. Thornton seemed 
hardly to understand the exact gist or bearing of what she 
was saying, but passed her by, with a cold reserve of cere- 
monious movement, to speak to Mrs. Hale. 

The sight of him reminded her of the wish to see his 
mother, and commend Margaret to her care. Margaret, 
sitting in burning silence, vexed and ashamed of her diffi- 
culty in keeping her right place, and her calm unconscious- 
ness of heart, when Mr. Thornton was by, heard her mother’s 

282 


A Ray of Sunshine 

slow entreaty that Mrs. Thornton would come and see her ; 
see her soon ; to-morrow, if it were possible. Mr. Thornton 
promised that she should — conversed a little, and then took 
his leave; and Margaret’s movements and voice seemed at 
once released from some invisible chains. He never looked 
at her ; and yet, the careful avoidance of his eyes betokened 
that in some way he knew exactly where, if they fell by 
chance, they would rest on her. If she spoke, he gave no 
sign of attention, and yet his next speech to any one else 
was modified by what she had said ; sometimes there was 
an express answer to what she had remarked, but given to 
another person, as though unsuggested by her. It was not 
the bad manners of ignorance : it was the wilful bad 
manners arising from deep offence. It was wilful at the 
time ; repented of afterwards. But no deep plan, no careful 
cunning, could have stood him in such good stead. Mar- 
garet thought about him more than she had ever done 
before ; not with any tinge of what is called love, but with 
regret that she had wounded him so deeply — and with a 
gentle, patient striving to return to their former position of 
antagonistic friendship ; for a friend’s position was what she 
found that he had held in her regard, as well as in that^of 
the rest of the family. There was a pretty humility in her 
behaviour to him, as if mutely apologising for the over-strong 
words which were the reaction from the deeds of the day of 
the riot. 

But he resented those words bitterly. They rung in his 
ears ; and he was proud of the sense of justice which made 
him offer every kindness he could to her parents. He 
exulted in the power he showed in compelling himself to face 
her, whenever he could think of any action which might give 
her father or mother pleasure. He thought that he disliked 
seeing one who had mortified him so keenly ; but he was 
mistaken. It was a stinging pleasure to be in the room with 
her, and feel her presence. But he was no great analyser 
of his own motives, and was mistaken, as I have said. 


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North and South 


CHAPTEE XXX 

HOME AT LAST 

“ The saddest birds a season find to sing.” 

Southwell. 

“ Never to fold the robe o’er secret pain, 

Never, weighed down by memory’s clouds again, 

To bow thy head 1 Thou art gone home ! ” 

Mrs. Hemans. 

Mes. Thornton came to see Mrs. Hale the next morning. 
She was much worse. One of those sudden changes — those 
great visible strides towards death, had been taken in the 
night ; and her own family were startled by the grey, sunken 
look her features had assumed in that one twelve hours of 
suffering. Mrs. Thornton — who had not seen her for weeks 
— was softened all at once. She had come because her son 
asked it from her as a personal favour, but with all the proud 
bitter feelings of her nature in arms against that family 
of which Margaret formed one. She doubted the reality 
of, Mrs. Hale’s illness ; she doubted any want beyond a 
momentary fancy on that lady’s part, which should take her 
out of her previously settled course of employment for the 
day. She told her son that she wished they had never come 
near the place ; that he had never got acquainted with them ; 
that there had been no such useless languages as Latin and 
Greek ever invented. He bore all this pretty silently; but 
when she had ended her invective against the dead languages, 
he quietly returned to the short, curt, decided expression of 
his wish that she should go and see Mrs. Hale at the time 
appointed, as most likely to be convenient to the invalid. 
Mrs. Thornton submitted with as bad a grace as she could 
to her son’s desire, all the time liking him the better for 
having it ; and exaggerating in her own mind the same notion 
that he had of extraordinary goodness on his part in so 
perseveringly keeping up with the Hales. 

284 


Home at Last 

His goodness verging on weakness (as all the softer 
virtues did in her mind), and her own contempt for Mr. and 
Mrs. Hale, and positive dislike to Margaret, were the ideas 
which occupied Mrs. Thornton, till she was struck into 
nothingness before the dark shadow of the wings of the 
angel of death. There lay Mrs. Hale — a mother like herself 
— a much younger woman than she was — on the bed from 
which there was no sign of hope that she might ever rise 
again. No more variety of light or shade for her in that 
darkened room; no power of action, scarcely change of 
movement ; faint alternations of whispered sound and 
studious silence ; and yet that monotonous life seemed 
almost too much! When Mrs. Thornton, strong and pros- 
perous with life, came in, Mrs. Hale lay still, although from 
the look on her face she was evidently conscious of who it 
was. But she did not even open her eyes for a minute or 
two. The heavy moisture of tears stood on the eyelashes 
before she looked up; then, with her hand groping feebly 
over the bed-clothes, for the touch of Mrs. Thornton’s large 
firm fingers, she said, scarcely above her breath, — Mrs. 
Thornton had to stoop from her erectness to listen — 

“ Margaret — you have a daughter— my sister is in Italy. 
My child will be without a mother ; — in a strange place — if 
I die — will you ” — — 

And her filmy wandering eyes fixed themselves with an 
intensity of wistfulness on Mrs. Thornton’s face. For a 
minute there was no change in its rigidness ; it was stern 
and unmoved ; — nay, but that the eyes of the sick woman 
were growing dim with the slow-gathering tears, she might 
have seen a dark cloud cross the cold features. And it was 
no thought of her son, or of her living daughter Fanny, that 
stirred her heart at last ; but a sudden remembrance, sug- 
gested by something in the arrangement of the room — of 
a little daughter — dead in infancy — long years ago — that, 
like a sudden, sunbeam, melted the icy crust, behind which 
there was a real tender woman. 

“You wish me to be a friend to Miss Hale,” said Mrs. 

285 


North and South 

Thornton, in her measured voice, that would not soften with 
her heart, but came out distinct and clear. 

Mrs. Hale, her eyes still fixed on Mrs. Thornton’s face, 
pressed the hand that lay below hers on the coverlet. She 
could not speak. Mrs. Thornton sighed, “ I will be a true 
friend, if circumstances require it. Not a tender friend. That 
I cannot be,” — (“ to her,” she was on the point of adding, 
but she relented at the sight of that poor, anxious face.) — 
“ It is not my nature to show affection even where I feel it, 
nor do I volunteer advice in general. Still, at your request 
— if it will be any comfort to you, I will promise you.” Then 
came a pause. Mrs. Thornton was too conscientious to pro- 
mise what she did not mean to perform ; and to perform 
anything in the way of kindness on behalf of Margaret, more 
disliked at this moment than ever, was difficult; almost 
impossible. 

“ I promise,” said she, with grave severity ; which, after 
all, inspired the dying woman with faith as in something 
more stable than life itself — flickering, flitting, wavering 
life! “I promise that in any difficulty in which Miss 
Hale ” 

“ Call her Margaret ! ” gasped Mrs. Hale. 

“ In which she comes to me for help, I will help her 
with every power I have, as if she were my own daughter. 
I also promise that if ever I see her doing what I think is 
wrong ” 

“ But Margaret never does wrong — not wilfully wrong,” 
pleaded Mrs. Hale. Mrs. Thornton went on as before ; as 
if she had not heard — 

“ If ever I see her doing what I believe to be wrong — 
such wrong not touching me or mine, in which case I might 
be supposed to have an interested motive — I will tell her of 
it, faithfully and plainly, as I should wish my own daughter 
to be told.” 

There was a long pause. Mrs. Hale felt that this pro- 
mise did not include all; and yet it was much. It had 
reservations in it which she did not understand ; but then 

286 


Home at Last 

she was weak, dizzy, and tired. Mrs. Thornton was review- 
ing all the probable cases in which she had pledged herself 
to act. She had a fierce pleasure in the idea of telling 
Margaret unwelcome truths, in the shape of performance of 
duty. Mrs. Hale began to speak — 

“ I thank you. I pray God to bless you. I shall never 
see you again in this world. But my last words are, I thank 
you for your promise of kindness to my child.” 

“Not kindness ! ” testified Mrs. Thornton, ungraciously 
truthful to the last. But having eased her conscience by 
saying these words, she was not sorry that they were not 
heard. She pressed Mrs. Hale’s soft, languid hand ; and rose 
up and went her way out of the house without seeing a 
creature. 

During the time that Mrs. Thornton was having this 
interview with Mrs. Hale, Margaret and Dixon were laying 
their heads together and consulting how they should keep 
Frederick’s coming a profound secret to all out of the house. 
A letter from him might now be expected any day ; and he 
would most assuredly follow quickly on its heels. Martha 
must be sent away on her holiday ; Dixon must keep stern 
guard on the front door, only admitting the few visitors that 
ever came to the house into Mr. Hale’s room downstairs — 
Mrs. Hale’s extreme illness giving her a good excuse for this. 
If Mary Higgins was required as a help to Dixon in the 
kitchen, she was to hear and see as little of Frederick as 
possible ; and he was, if necessary, to be spoken of to her 
under the name of Mr. Dickinson. But her sluggish and 
incurious nature was the greatest safeguard of all. 

They resolved that Martha should leave them that very 
afternoon for this visit to her mother. Margaret wished that 
she had been sent away on the previous day, as she fancied 
it might be thought strange to give a servant a holiday when 
her mistress’s state required so much attendance. 

Poor Margaret ! All that afternoon she had to act the 
part of a Roman daughter, and give strength out of her own 
scanty stock to her father. Mr. Hale would hope, would not 

287 


North and South 

despair, between the attacks of his wife’s malady ; he buoyed 
himself up in every respite from her pain, and believed that 
it was the beginning of ultimate recovery. And so, when 
the paroxysms came on, each more severe than the last, they 
were fresh agonies, and greater disappointments to him. 
This afternoon, he sat in the drawing-room, unable to bear 
the solitude of his study, or to employ himself in any way. 
He buried his head in his arms, which lay folded on the table. 
Margaret’s heart ached to see him ; yet, as he did not speak, 
she did not like to volunteer any attempt at comfort. Martha 
was gone. Dixon sat with Mrs. Hale while she slept. The 
house was very still and quiet, and darkness came on, with- 
out any movement to procure candles. Margaret sat at the 
window, looking out at the lamps and the street, but seeing 
nothing, — only alive to her father’s heavy sighs. She did 
not like to go down for lights, lest, the tacit restraint of her 
presence being withdrawn, he might give way to more violent 
emotion* without her being at hand to comfort him. Yet she 
was just thinking that she ought to go and see after the 
well-doing of the kitchen fire, which there was nobody but 
herself to attend to, when she heard the muffled door-bell 
ring with so violent a pull, that the wires jingled all through 
the house, though the positive sound was not great. She 
started up, passed her father, who had never moved at 
the veiled, dull sound, — returned, and kissed him tenderly. 
And still he never moved, nor took any notice of her 
fond embrace. Then she went down softly, through the 
dark, to the door. Dixon would have put the chain on 
before she opened it, but Margaret had not a thought of 
fear in her pre-occupied mind. A man’s tall figure stood 
between her and the luminous street. He was looking 
away; but at the sound of the latch he turned quickly 
round. 

“ Is this Mr. Hale’s ? ” said he, in a clear, full, delicate 
voice. 

Margaret trembled all over ; at first she did not answer. 
In a moment she sighed out — 

288 


Home at Last 

“ Frederick ! ” and stretched out both her hands to catch 
his, and draw him in. 

“ Oh, Margaret ! ” said he, holding her off by her shoulders, 
after they had kissed each other, as if even in the darkness he 
could see her face, and read in its expression a quicker answer 
to his question than words could give — 

“ My mother, is she alive ? ” 

“ Yes, she is alive, dear, dear brother ! She — as ill as she 
can be she is ; but alive ! She is alive ! ” 

“ Thank God ! ” said he. 

“ Papa is utterly prostrate with his great grief.” 

“ You expect me, don’t you ? ” 

“No, we have had no letter.” 

“ Then I have come before it. But my mother knows I 
am coming.” 

“ Oh ! we all knew you would come. But wait a little ! 
Step in here. Give me your hand. What is this ? Oh ! 
your carpet-bag. Dixon has shut the shutters ; but this is 
papa’s study, and I can take you to a chair to rest yourself 
for a few minutes ; while I go and tell him.” 

She groped her way to the taper and the lucifer matches. 
She suddenly felt shy, when the little feeble light made them 
visible. All she could see was, that her brother’s face was 
unusually dark in complexion ; and she caught the stealthy 
look of a pair of remarkably long-cut blue eyes, that suddenly 
twinkled up with a droll consciousness of their mutual pur- 
pose of inspecting each other. But, though the brother and 
sister had an instant of sympathy in their reciprocal glances, 
they did not exchange a word ; only Margaret felt sure that 
she should like her brother as a companion as much as she 
already loved him as a near relation. Her heart was won- 
derfully lighter as she went upstairs ; the sorrow was no 
less in reality, but it became less oppressive from having 
some one in precisely the same relation to it as that in 
which- she stood. Not her father’s desponding attitude 
had power to damp her now. He lay across the table, 
helpless as ever; but she had the spell by which to rouse 

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North and South 

him. She used it perhaps too violently in her own great 
relief. 

“ Papa,” said she, throwing her arms fondly round his 
neck ; pulling his weary head up in fact with gentle violence, 
till it rested in her arms, and she could look into his eyes, 
and let them gain strength and assurance from hers. 

“ Papa ! guess who is here ! ” 

He looked at her ; she saw the idea of the truth glimmer 
into their filmy sadness, and be dismissed thence as a wild 
imagination. 

He threw himself forward, and hid his face once more in 
his stretched-out arms, resting upon the table as heretofore. 
She heard him whisper ; she bent tenderly down to listen. 
“ I don’t know. Don’t tell me it is Frederick — not Frederick. 
I cannot bear it — I am too weak. And his mother is 
dying ! ” 

He began to cry and wail like a child. It was so different 
to all which Margaret had hoped and expected, that she 
turned sick with disappointment, and was silent for an 
instant. Then she spoke again — very differently — not so 
exultingly, far more tenderly and carefully. 

“ Papa, it is Frederick ! Think of mamma, how glad she 
will be ! And oh, for her sake, how glad we ought to be ! 
For his sake, too — our poor, poor boy! ” 

Her father did not change his attitude, but he seemed to 
be trying to understand the fact. 

“ Where is he ? ” asked he at last, his face still hidden in 
his prostrate arms. 

“ In your study, quite alone. I lighted the taper, and 
ran up to tell you. He is quite alone, and will be wondering 
why ” 

“I will go to him,” broke in her father; and he lifted 
himself up and leant on her arm as on that of a guide. 

Margaret led him to the study door, but her spirits were 
so agitated that she felt she could not bear to see the meet- 
ing. She turned away, and ran upstairs, and cried most 
heartily. It was the first time she had dared to allow 

290 


Home at Last 

herself this relief for days. The strain had been terrible, 
as she now felt. But Frederick was come! He, the one 
precious brother, was there, safe, amongst them again ! She 
could hardly believe it. She stopped her crying, and opened 
her bedroom door. She heard no sound of voices, and 
almost feared she might have dreamt. She went downstairs, 
and listened at the study door. She heard the buzz of 
voices; and that was enough. She went into the kitchen, 
and stirred up the fire, and lighted the house, and prepared 
for the wanderer’s refreshment. How fortunate it was that 
her mother slept ! She knew that she did, from the candle- 
lighter thrust through the keyhole of her bedroom door. 
The traveller could be refreshed and bright, and the first 
excitement of the meeting with his father all be over, before 
her mother became aware of anything unusual. 

When all was ready, Margaret opened the study door, 
and went in like a serving-maiden, with a heavy tray held 
in her extended arms. She was proud of serving Frederick. 
But he, when he saw her, sprang up in a minute, and re- 
lieved her of her burden. It was a type, a sign, of all the 
coming relief which his presence would bring. The brother 
and sister arranged the table together, saying little, but 
their hands touching, and their eyes speaking the natural 
language of expression, so intelligible to those of the same 
blood. The fire had gone out ; and Margaret applied herself 
to light it, for the evenings had begun to be chilly ; and yet 
it was desirable to make all noises as distant as possible 
from Mrs. Hale’s room. 

“ Dixon says it is a gift to light a fire ; not an art to be 
acquired.” 

“ Poeta nascitur, non fit,” murmured Mr. Hale ; and 
Margaret was glad to hear a quotation once more, however 
languidly given. 

“ Dear old Dixon ! How we shall kiss each other ! ” 
said Frederick. “ She used to kiss me, and then look in 
my face to be sure I was the right person, and then set 
to again ! But, Margaret, what a bungler you are ! I never 

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North and South 

saw such a little awkward, good-for-nothing pair of hands. 
Run away, and wash them, ready to cut bread-and-butter 
for me, and leave the fire. I’ll manage it. Lighting fires 
is one of my natural accomplishments.” 

So Margaret went away; and returned; and passed in 
and out of the room, in a glad restlessness that could not 
be satisfied with sitting still. The more wants Frederick 
had, the better she was pleased ; and he understood all this 
by instinct. It was a joy snatched in the house of mourning; 
and the zest of it was all the more pungent, because they 
knew in the depths of their hearts what irremediable sorrow 
awaited them. 

In the middle, they heard Dixon’s foot on the stairs. 
Mr. Hale started from his languid posture in his great arm- 
chair, from which he had been watching his children in a 
dreamy way, as if they were acting some drama of happiness, 
which it was pretty to look at, but which was distinct from 
reality, and in which he had no part. He stood up, and 
faced the door, showing such a strange, sudden anxiety to 
conceal Frederick from the sight of any person entering, 
even though it were the faithful Dixon, that a shiver came 
over Margaret’s heart : it reminded her of the new fear in 
their lives. She caught at Frederick’s arm, and clutched 
it tight, while a stern thought compressed her brow, and 
caused her to set her teeth. And yet they knew it was 
only Dixon’s measured tread. They heard her walk the 
length of the passage — into the kitchen. Margaret rose up. 

“ I will go to her, and tell her. And I shall hear how 
mamma is.” Mrs. Hale was awake. She rambled at first; 
but after they had given her some tea she was refreshed, 
though not disposed 1 to talk. It was better that the night 
should pass over before she was told of her son’s arrival. 
Dr. Donaldson’s appointed visit would bring nervous ex- 
citement enough for the evening; and he might tell them 
how to prepare her for seeing Frederick. He was there, in 
the house ; could be summoned at any moment. 

Margaret could not sit still. It was a relief to her to 
292 


Home at Last 

aid Dixon in all her preparations for “ Master Frederick.” 
It seemed as though she never could be tired again. Each 
glimpse into the room where he sate by his father, con- 
versing with him, about, she knew not what, nor cared to 
know — was increase of strength to her. Her own time for 
talking and hearing would come at last, and she was too 
certain of this to feel in a hurry to grasp it now. She took 
in his appearance and liked it. He had delicate features, 
redeemed from effeminacy by the swarthiness of his com- 
plexion, and his quick intensity of expression. His eyes 
were generally merry-looking, but at times they and his 
mouth so suddenly changed, and gave her such an idea of 
latent passion, that it almost made her afraid. But this 
look was only for an instant ; and had in it no doggedness, 
no vindictiveness ; it was rather the instantaneous ferocity 
of expression that comes over the countenances of all natives 
of wild or southern countries — a ferocity which enhances 
the charm of the childlike softness into which such a look 
may melt away. Margaret might fear the violence of the 
impulsive nature thus occasionally betrayed, but there was 
nothing in it to make her distrust, or recoil in the least 
from, the new-found brother. On the contrary, all their 
intercourse was peculiarly charming to her from the very 
first. She knew then how much responsibility she had had 
to bear, from the exquisite sensation of relief which she 
felt in Frederick’s presence. He understood his father and 
mother— -their characters and their weaknesses, and went 
along with a careless freedom, which was yet most delicately 
careful not to hurt or wound any of their feelings. He 
seemed to know instinctively when a little of the natural 
brilliancy of his manner and conversation would not jar on 
the deep depression of his father, or might relieve his 
mother’s pain. Whenever it would have been out of tune, 
and out of time, his patient devotion and watchfulness came 
into play, and made him an admirable nurse. Then Margaret 
was almost touched into tears by the allusions which he 
often made to their childish days in the New Forest; he 

293 


North and South 

had never forgotten her — or Helstone either — all the time 
he had been roaming among distant countries and foreign 
people. She might talk to him of the old spot, and never 
feared tiring him. She had been afraid of him before he 
came, even while she had longed for his coming ; seven or 
eight years had, she felt, produced such great changes in 
herself that, forgetting how much of the original Margaret 
was left, she had reasoned that if her tastes and feelings had 
so materially altered, even in her stay-at-home life, his wild 
career, with which she was but imperfectly acquainted, must 
have almost substituted another Frederick for* the tall strip- 
ling in his middy’s uniform, whom she remembered looking 
up to with such admiring awe. But in their absence they 
had grown nearer to each other in age, as well as in many 
other things. And so it was that the weight, this sorrowful 
time, was lightened to Margaret. Other light than that of 
Frederick’s presence she had none. For a few hours, the 
mother rallied on seeing her son. She sate with his hand 
in hers ; she would not part with it even while she slept ; 
and Margaret had to feed him like a baby, rather than that 
he should disturb her mother by removing a finger. Mrs. 
Hale wakened while they were thus engaged ; she slowly 
moved her head round on the pillow, and smiled at her 
children, as she understood what they were doing, and why 
it was done. 

“ I am very selfish,” said she ; “ but it will not be for 
long.” Frederick bent down and kissed the feeble hand 
that imprisoned his. 

This state of tranquillity could not endure for many days, 
nor perhaps for many hours ; so Dr. Donaldson assured 
Margaret. After the kind doctor had gone away, she stole 
down to Frederick, who, during the visit, had been adjured 
to remain quietly concealed in the back parlour, usually 
Dixon’s bedroom, but now given up to him. 

Margaret told him what Dr. Donaldson said. 

“ I don’t believe it,” he exclaimed. “ She is very ill ; 
she may be dangerously ill, and in immediate danger, too ; 

294 


Home at Last 

but I can’t imagine that she could be as she is, if she were 
on the point of death. Margaret ! she should have some 
other advice — some London doctor. Have you never 
thought of that ? ” 

“Yes,” said Margaret, “more than once. But I don’t 
believe it would do any good. And, you know 1 , we have not 
the money to bring any great London surgeon down ; and 
I am sure Dr. Donaldson is only second in skill to the very 
best — if, indeed, he is to them.” 

Frederick began to walk up and down the room im- 
patiently. 

“ I have credit in Cadiz,” said he, “ but none here, owing 
to this wretched change of name. Why did my father leave 
Helstone ? That was the blunder.” 

“ It was no blunder,” said Margaret gloomily. “ And 
above all possible chances, avoid letting papa hear anything 
like w T hat you have just been saying. I can see that he 
is tormenting himself already with the idea that mamma 
would never have been ill if we had stayed at Helstone, 
and you don’t know papa’s agonising power of self-reproach ! ” 

Frederick walked away as if he were on the quarter-deck. 
At last he stopped right opposite to Margaret, and looked 
at her drooping and desponding attitude for an instant. 

“ My little Margaret ! ” said he, caressing her. “ Let us 
hope as long as we can. Poor little woman ! what ! is this 
face all wet with tears ? I will hope. I will, in spite of a 
thousand doctors. Bear up, Margaret, and be brave enough 
to hope ! ” 

Margaret choked in trying to speak, and when she did 
it was very low. 

“ I must try to be meek enough to trust. Oh, Frederick ! 
mamma was getting to love me so ! And I was getting to 
understand her. And now comes death to snap us asunder ! ” 

“ Come, come, come ! Let us go upstairs, and do some- 
thing, rather than waste time that may be so precious. 
Thinking has, many a time, made me sad, darling; but 
doing never did in all my life. My theory is a sort of 

295 


North and South 

parody on the maxim of ‘ Get money, my son — honestly if 
you can ; but get money.’ My precept is, ‘ Do something, 
my sister — do good if you can ; but, at any rate, do some- 
thing.’ ” 

“Not excluding mischief,” said Margaret, smiling faintly 
through her tears. 

“By no means. What I do exclude is the remorse 
afterwards. Blot your misdeeds out (if you are particularly 
conscientious), by a good deed, as soon as you can; just 
as we did a correct sum at school t>n the slate, where an 
incorrect one was only half rubbed out. It was better than 
wetting our sponge with our tears ; both less loss of time 
where tears had to be waited for, and a better effect at last.” 

If Margaret thought Frederick’s theory rather a rough 
one at first, she saw how he worked it out into continual 
production of kindness in fact. After a bad night with his 
mother (for he insisted on taking his turn as a sitter-up) 
he was busy next morning before breakfast, contriving a 
leg-rest for Dixon, who was beginning to feel the fatigues 
of watching. At breakfast-time, he interested Mr. Hale 
with vivid, graphic, rattling accounts of the wild life he 
had led in Mexico, South America, and elsewhere. Margaret 
would have given up the effort in despair to rouse Mr. Hale 
out of his dejection; it would even have affected herself 
and rendered her incapable of talking at all. But Fred, 
true to his theory, did something perpetually; and talking 
was the only thing to be done, besides eating, at breakfast. 

Before the night of that day, Dr. Donaldson’s opinion 
was proved to be too well founded. Convulsions came on ; 
and when they ceased, Mrs. Hale was unconscious. Her 
husband might lie by her shaking the bed with his sobs; 
her son’s strong arms might lift her tenderly up into a 
comfortable position; her daughter’s hands might bathe 
her face; but she knew them not. She would never 
recognise them again, till they met in heaven. 

Before the morning came all was over. 

Then Margaret rose from her trembling and despondency, 
296 


Home at Last 

and became as a strong angel of comfort to her father and 
brother. For Frederick had broken down now, and all his 
theories were of no use to him. He cried so violently when 
shut up alone in his little room at night, that Margaret and 
Dixon came down in affright to warn him to be quiet : for 
the house partitions were but thin, and the next-door neigh- 
bours might easily hear his youthful passionate sobs, so 
different from the slower trembling agony of after-life, when 
we become inured to grief, and dare not be rebellious against 
the inexorable doom, knowing Who it is that decrees. 

Margaret sate with her father in the room with the dead. 
If he had cried, she would have been thankful. But he 
sate tay the bed quite quietly; only, from time to time, he 
uncovered the face, and stroked it gently, making a kind 
of soft inarticulate noise, like that of some mother- animal 
caressing her young. He took no notice of Margaret’s 
presence. Once or twice she came up to kiss him ; and he 
submitted to it, giving her a little push away when she had 
done, as if her affection disturbed him from his absorption 
in the dead. He started when he heard Frederick’s cries, 
and shook his head : — “ Poor boy ! poor boy !”he said, and 
took no more notice. Margaret’s heart ached within her. 
She could not think of her own loss in thinking of her 
father’s case. The night was wearing away, and the day 
was at hand, when, without a word of preparation, Margaret’s 
voice broke upon the stillness of the room, with a clearness 
of sound that startled even herself : “ Let not your heart be 
troubled," it said ; and she went steadily on through all that 
chapter of unspeakable consolation. 


297 


North and South 


CHAPTEE XXXI 

“SHOULD auld acquaintance be forgot** 

“ Show not that manner, and these features all, 

The serpent’s cunning, and the sinner’s fall? ” 

Crabbe. 

The chill, shivery October morning came; not the October 
morning of the country, with soft, silvery mists, clearing off 
before the sunbeams that bring out all the gorgeous beauty 
of colouring, but the October morning of Milton, whose 
sjlvery mists were heavy fogs, and where the sun could 
only show long dusky streets when he did break through 
and shine. Margaret went languidly about, assisting Dixon 
in her task of arranging the- house. Her eyes were con- 
tinually blinded with tears, but she had no time to give 
way to regular crying. The father and brother depended 
upon her; while they were giving way to grief, she must 
be working, planning, considering. Even the necessary 
arrangements for the funeral seemed to devolve upon her. 

When the fire was bright and crackling — when every- 
thing was ready for breakfast, and the tea-kettle was singing 
away, Margaret gave a last look round the room before 
going to summon Mr. Hale and Frederick. She wanted 
everything to look as cheerful as possible; and yet, when 
it did so, the contrast between it and her own thoughts 
forced her into sudden weeping. She was kneeling by the 
sofa, hiding her face in the cushions that no one might hear 
her cry, when she was touched on the shoulder by Dixon. 

“ Come, Miss Hale — come, my dear ! You must not 
give way, or where shall we all be ? There is not another 
person in the house fit to give a direction of any kind, and 
there is so much to be done. There’s who’s to manage the 
funeral ; and who’s to come to it ; and where it’s to be ; and 
all to be settled; and Master Frederick’s like one crazed 

298 


“Should Auld Acquaintance be forgot” 

with crying ; and master never was a good one for settling ; 
and, poor gentleman, he goes about now as if he was lost. 
It’s bad enough, my dear, I know ; but death comes to us 
all; and you’re well off never to have lost any friend till 
now.” 

Perhaps so. But this seemed a loss by itself ; not to 
bear comparison with any other event in the world. Mar- 
garet did not take any comfort from what Dixon said, but 
the unusual tenderness of the prim old servant’s manner 
touched her to the heart ; and, more from a desire to show 
her gratitude for this than for any other reason, she roused 
herself up, and smiled in answer to Dixon’s anxious look at 
her ; and went to tell her father and brother that breakfast 
was ready. 

Mr. Hale came — as if in a dream, or rather with the 
unconscious motion of a sleep-walker, whose eyes and mind 
perceive other things than what are present. Frederick came 
briskly in, with a forced cheerfulness, grasped her hand, 
looked into her eyes, and burst into tears. She had to try 
and think of little nothings to say all breakfast-time, in 
order to prevent the recurrence of her companions’ thoughts 
too strongly to the last meal they had taken together, when 
there had been a continual strained listening for some sound 
or signal from the sick-room. 

After breakfast, she resolved to speak to her father about 
the funeral. He shook his head, and assented to all she 
proposed, though many of her propositions absolutely con- 
tradicted one another. Margaret gained no real decision 
from him; and was leaving the room languidly, to have a 
consultation with Dixon, when Mr. Hale motioned her back 
to his side. 

“Ask Mr. Bell,” said he in a hollow voice. 

“ Mr. Bell ! ” said she, a little surprised. “ Mr. Bell of 
Oxford ? ” 

“ Mr. Bell,” he repeated. “ Yes. He was my groom’s- 
man.” 

Margaret understood the association. 

299 


North and South 

“ I will write to-day,” said she. He sank again into 
listlessness. All morning she toiled on, longing for rest, 
but in a continual whirl of melancholy business. 

Towards evening, Dixon said to her — 

“ I’ve done it, miss. I was really afraid for master, that 
he’d have a stroke with grief. He’s been all this day with 
poor missus ; and when I’ve listened at the door, I’ve heard 
him talking to her, and talking to her, as if she was alive. 
When I went in he would be quite quiet, but all in a maze 
like. So I thought to myself, he ought to be roused ; and if 
it gives him a shock at first, it will, maybe, be the better 
afterward^. So I’ve been and told him, that I don’t think 
it’s safe for Master Frederick to be here. And I don’t. It 
was only on Tuesday, when I was out, that I met a South- 
ampton man — the first I’ve seen since I came to Milton ; 
they don’t make their way much up here, I think. Well, 
it was young Leonards, old Leonards the draper’s son, as 
great a scamp as ever lived — who plagued his father almost 
to death, and then ran off to sea. I never could abide him. 
He was in the Orion at the same time as Master Frederick, 
I know; though I don’t recollect if he was there at the 
mutiny.” 

“ Did he know you ? ” said Margaret eagerly. 

“ Why, that’s the worst of it. I don’t believe he would 
have known me but for my being such a fool as to call out 
his name. He were a Southampton man, in a strange place, 
or else I should never have been so ready to call cousins with 
him, a nasty, good-for-nothing fellow. Says he, ‘ Miss Dixon ! 
who would ha’ thought of seeing you here ? But perhaps I 
mistake, and you are Miss Dixon no longer ? ’ So I told him 
he might still address me as an unmarried lady, though, if I 
hadn’t been so particular, I’d had good chances of matrimony. 
He was polite enough : ‘ He couldn’t look at me and doubt 
me.’ But I were not to be caught with such chaff from such 
a fellow as him, and so I told him ; and, by way of being 
even, I asked him after his father (who I knew had turned 
him out of doors), as if they was the best friends as ever was. 

300 


“Should Auld Acquaintance be forgot” 

So then, to spite me — for you see we were getting savage, for 
all we were so civil to each other — he began to inquire after 
Master Frederick, and said, what a scrape he’d got into (as if 
Master Frederick’s scrapes would ever wash George Leonards 
white, or make him look otherwise than nasty, dirty black), 
and how he’d be hung for mutiny if ever he were caught, and 
how a hundred pound reward had been offered for catching 
him, and what a disgrace he had been to his family — all to 
spite me, you see, my dear, because before now I’ve helped 
old Mr. Leonards to give George a good rating, down in 
Southampton. So I said, there were other families as I 
knew, who had far more cause to blush for their sons, and 
to be thankful if they could think they were earning an honest 
living far away from home. To which he made answer, like 
the impudent chap he is, that he were in a confidential situa- 
tion, and if I knew any young man who had been so unfortu- 
nate as to lead vicious courses, and wanted to turn steady, 
he’d have no objection to lend him his patronage. He, 
indeed ! Why, he’d corrupt a saint. I’ve not felt so bad 
myself for years as when I were standing talking to him the 
other day. I could have cried to think I couldn’t spite him 
better, for he kept smiling in my face, as if he took all my com- 
pliments for earnest ; and I couldn’t see that he minded what 
I said in the least, while I was mad with all his speeches.” 

“ But you did not tell him anything about us — about 
Frederick ? ” 

“ Not I,” said Dixon. “ He had never the grace to ask 
where I was staying ; and I shouldn’t have told him if he 
had asked. Nor did I ask him what his precious situation 
was. He was waiting for a bus, and just then it drove up, 
and he hailed it. But, to plague me to the last, he turned 
back before he got in, and said, ‘ If you can help me to trap 
Lieutenant Hale, Miss Dixon, we’ll go partners in the reward. 
I know you’d like to be my partner, now wouldn’t you ? 
Don’t be shy, but say yes.’ And he jumped on the bus, and 
I saw his ugly face leering at me with a wicked smile to think 
how he’d had the last word of plaguing.” 

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North and South 

Margaret was made very uncomfortable by this account 
of Dixon’s. 

“ Have you told Frederick ? ” asked she. 

“No,” said Dixon. “ I were uneasy in my mind at 
knowing that bad Leonards was in town ; but there was so 
much else to think about that I did not dwell on it at all. 
But when I saw master sitting so stiff, and with his eyes so 
glazed and sad, I thought it might rouse him to have to 
think of Master Frederick’s safety a bit. So I told him all, 
though I blushed to say how a young man had been speak- 
ing to me. And it has done master good. And if we’re to 
keep Master Frederick in hiding, he would have to go, poor 
fellow, before Mr. Bell came.” 

“ Oh, I^m not afraid of Mr. Bell ; but I am afraid of this 
Leonards. I must tell Frederick. What did Leonards look 
like?” 

“ A bad-looking fellow, I can assure you, miss. Whiskers 
such as I should be ashamed to wear — they are so red. And 
for all he said he’d got a confidential situation, he was 
dressed in fustian just like a working-man.” 

It was evident that Frederick must go. Go, too, when 
he had so completely vaulted into his place in the family, 
and promised to be such a stay and staff to his father and 
sister. Go, when his cares for the living mother, and sorrow 
for the dead, seemed to make him one of those peculiar people 
who are bdund to us by a fellow-love for them that are taken 
away. Just as Margaret was thinking all this, sitting over 
the drawing-room fire — her father restless and uneasy under 
the pressure of this newly-aroused fear, of which he had not 
as yet spoken — Frederick came in, his brightness dimmed, 
but the extreme violence of his grief passed away. He came 
up to Margaret, and kissed her forehead. 

“ How wan you look, Margaret ! ” said he in a low voice. 
“You have been thinking of everybody, and no one has 
thought of you. Lie on this sofa — there is nothing for you 
to do.” 

“ That is the worst,” said Margaret in a sad whisper. 

302 


“Should Auld Acquaintance be forgot” 

But she went and lay down, and her brother covered her 
feet with a shawl, and then sate on the ground by her side ; 
and the two began to talk in a subdued tone. 

Margaret told him all that Dixon had related of her 
interview with young Leonards. Frederick’s bps closed with 
a long whew of dismay. 

“ I should just like to have it out with that young fellow. 
A worse sailor was never on board ship — nor a much worse 
man either. I declare, Margaret — you know the circumstances 
of the whole affair ? ” 

“Yes, mamma told me.” 

“ Well, when all the sailors who were good for anything 
were indignant with our captain, this fellow, to curry favour 
— pah ! And to think of his being here ! Oh, if he’d a notion 
I was within twenty miles of him, he’d ferret me out to pay 
off old grudges. I’d rather anybody had the hundred pounds 
they think I am worth than that rascal. What a pity poor 
old Dixon could not be persuaded to give me up, and make 
a provision for her old age ! ” 

“ Oh, Frederick, hush ! Don’t talk so.” 

Mr. Hale came towards them, eager and trembling. 
He had overheard what they were saying. He took 
Frederick’s hand in both of his — 

“ My boy, you must go. It is very bad — but I see you 
must. You have done all you could — you have been a 
comfort to her.” 

“ Oh, papa, must he go ? ” said Margaret, pleading against 
her own conviction of necessity. 

“ I declare, I’ve a good mind to face it out, and stand 
my trial. If I could only pick up my evidence. I cannot 
endure the thought of being in the power of such a black- 
guard as that Leonards. I could almost have enjoyed — in 
other circumstances — this stolen visit: it has had all the 
charm which the Frenchwoman attributed to forbidden 
pleasures.” 

“ One of the earliest things I can remember,” said 
Margaret, “ was your being in some great disgrace, Fred, 

3°3 


North and South 

for stealing apples. We had plenty of trees of our own — 
trees loaded with them ; but some one had told you that 
stolen fruit tasted sweetest, which you took au pied de la lettre, 
and off you went a-robbing. You have not changed your 
feelings much since then.” 

“ Yes — you must go,” repeated Mr. Hale, answering 
Margaret’s question, which she had asked some time ago. 
His thoughts were fixed on one subject, and it was an effort 
to him to follow the zigzag remarks of his children — an 
effort which he did not make. 

Margaret and Frederick looked at each other. That quick 
momentary sympathy would be theirs no longer if he 
went away. So much was understood through eyes that 
could noi be put into words. Both coursed the same 
thought till it was lost in sadness. Frederick shook it off 
first — - 

“ Do you know, Margaret, I was very nearly giving both 
Dixon and myself a good fright this afternoon. I was in my 
bedroom ; I had heard a ring at the front door, but I thought 
the ringer must have done his business and gone away long 
ago ; so I was on the point of making my appearance in the 
passage, when, as I opened my room door, I saw Dixon 
coming downstairs; and she frowned and kicked me into 
hiding again. I kept the door open, and heard a message 
given to some man that was in my father’s study, and that 
then went away. Who could it have been? Some of the 
shopmen ? ” 

“ Very likely,” said Margaret indifferently. “ There was 
a little quiet man who came up for orders about two o’clock.” 

“ But this was not a little man — a great powerful fellow ; 
and it was past four when he was here.” 

“ It was Mr. Thornton,” said Mr. Hale. They were glad 
to have drawn him into the conversation. 

“ Mr. Thornton ! ” said Margaret, a little surprised. “ I 
thought ” 

“ Well, little one, what did you think ? ” asked Frederick, 
as she did not finish her sentence. 

3°4 


“Should Auld Acquaintance be forgot” 

“ Oh, only,” said she, reddening and looking straight at 
him, “ I fancied you meant some one of a different class, not 
a gentleman ; somebody come on an errand.” 

“ He looked like some one of that kind,” said Frederick 
carelessly. “ I took him for a shopman, and he turns out a 
manufacturer.” 

Margaret was silent. She remembered how at first, before 
she knew his character, she had spoken and thought of him 
just as Frederick was doing. It was but a natural impression 
that was made upon him, and yet she was a little annoyed 
by it. She was unwilling to speak ; she wanted to make 
Frederick understand what kind of person Mr. Thornton was 
— but she was tongue-tied. 

Mr. Hale went on. “ He came to offer any assistance in 
his power, I believe. But I could not see him. I told Dixon 
to ask him if he would like to see you — I think I asked her to 
find you, and you would go to him. I don’t know what I 
said.” 

“ He has been a very agreeable acquaintance, has he 
not? ” asked Frederick, throwing the question like a ball for 
any one to catch who chose. 

“ A very kind friend,” said Margaret, when her father 
did not answer. 

Frederick was silent for a time. At last he spoke — 

“ Margaret, it is painful to think I can never thank those 
who have shown you kindness. Your acquaintances and 
mine must be separate. Unless, indeed, I run the chances 
of a court-martial, or unless you and my father would come 
to Spain.” He threw out this last suggestion as a kind of 
feeler ; and then suddenly made the plunge. “ You don’t 
know how I wish you would. I have a good position — the 
chance of a better,” continued he, reddening like a girl. 
“ That Dolores Barbour that I was telling you of, Margaret — 
I only wish you knew her ; I am sure you would like — no, 
love is the right word, like is so poor — you would love her, 
father, if you knew her. She is not eighteen ; but, if she is 
in the same mind another year, she is to be my wife. Mr. 

3°5 x 


North and South 

Barbour won't let us call it an engagement. But if you 
would come you would find friends everywhere, besides 
Dolores. Think of it, father. Margaret, be on my side.” 

“ No — no more removals for me,” said Mr. Hale. “ One 
removal has cost me my wife. No more removals in this 
life. She will be here ; and here will I stay out my appointed 
time.” 

“ Oh, Frederick,” said Margaret, “ tell us more about 
her. I never thought of this ; but I am so glad. You will 
have some one to love and care for you out there. Tell us 
all about it.” 

“ In the first place, she is a Boman Catholic. That’s the 
only objection I anticipated. But my father’s change of 
opinion— nay, Margaret, don’t sigh.” 

Margaret had reason to sigh a little before the con- 
versation ended. Frederick himself was Boman Catholic in 
fact, though not in profession as yet. This was, then, the 
reason why his sympathy in her extreme distress at her 
father’s leaving the Church had been so faintly expressed in 
his letters. She had thought it was the carelessness of a 
sailor; but the truth was that even then he was himself 
inclined to give up the form of religion into which he had 
been baptized, only that his opinions were tending in exactly 
the opposite direction to those of his father. How much 
love had to do with this change not even Frederick himself 
could have told. Margaret gave up talking about this branch 
of the subject at last; and, returning to the fact of the 
engagement, she began to consider it in some fresh light. 

“ But for her sake, Fred, you surely will try and clear 
yourself of the exaggerated charges brought against you, 
even if the charge of mutiny itself be true. If there were to 
be a court-martial, and you could find your witnesses, you 
might, at any rate, show how your disobedience to authority 
was because that authority was unworthily exercised.” 

Mr. Hale roused himself up to listen to his son’s answer. 

“ In the first place, Margaret, who is to hunt up my 
witnesses ? All of them are sailors, drafted off to other 

3°6 


“Should Auld Acquaintance be forgot” 

ships, except those whose evidence would go for very little, 
as they took part or sympathised in the affair. In the next 
place, allow me to tell you, you don’t know what a court- 
martial is, and consider it as an assembly where justice is 
administered, instead of what it really is — a court where 
authority weighs nine-tenths in the balance, and evidence 
forms only the other tenth. In such cases, evidence itself 
can hardly escape being influenced by the prestige of 
authority.” 

“ But is it not worth trying, to see how much evidence 
might be discovered and arrayed on your behalf ? At pre- 
sent, all those who knew you formerly believe you guilty 
without any shadow of excuse. You have never tried to 
justify yourself, and we have never known where to seek for 
proofs of your justification. Now, for Miss Barbour’s sake, 
make your conduct as clear as you can in the eye of the 
world. She may not care for it ; she has, I am sure, that 
trust in you that we all have ; but you ought not to let her 
ally herself to one under such a serious charge, without 
showing the world exactly how it is you stand. You dis- 
obeyed authority — that was bad; but to have stood by, 
without word or act, while the authority was brutally used, 
would have been infinitely worse. People know what you 
did, but not the motives that elevate it out of a crime 
into an heroic protection of the weak. For Dolores’ sake, 
they ought to know.” 

“ But how must I make them know ? I am not suffi- 
ciently sure of the purity and justice of those who would be 
my judges to give myself up to a court-martial, even if I 
could bring a whole array of truth-speaking witnesses. I 
can’t send a bellman about, to cry aloud and proclaim in the 
streets what you are pleased to call my heroism. No one 
would read a pamphlet of self-justification so long after the 
deed, even if I put one out.” 

“ Will you consult a lawyer as to your chances of 
exculpation?” asked Margaret, looking up, and turning 
yery red, 


3°7 


North and South 

“ I must first catch my lawyer, and have a look at him, 
and see how I like him, before I make him into my confidant. 
Many a briefless barrister might twist his conscience into 
thinking that he could earn a hundred pounds very easily 
by doing a good action — in giving me, a criminal, up to 
justice 1 ” 

“ Nonsense, Frederick ! — because I know a lawyer on 
whose honour I could rely; of whose cleverness in his 
profession people speak very highly; and who would, I 
think, take a good deal of trouble for any of — of Aunt Shaw’s 
relations. Mr. Henry Lennox, papa.” 

“ I think it is a good idea,” said Mr. Hale. “ But don’t 
propose ^anything which will detain Frederick in England. 
Don’t, for your mother’s sake.” 

“ You could go to London to-morrow evening by a night- 
train,” continued Margaret, warming up into her plan. “ He 
must go to-morrow, I’m afraid, papa,” said she tenderly ; 
“ we fixed that, because of Mr. Bell, and Dixon’s disagreeable 
acquaintance.” 

“ Yes ; I must go to-morrow,” said Frederick decidedly. 

Mr. Hale groaned. “ I can’t bear to part with you, and 
yet I am miserable with anxiety as long as you stop here.” 

“ Well, then,” said Margaret, “ listen to my plan. He 
gets to London on Friday morning. I will — you might — 
no ! it would be better for me to give him a note to Mr. 
Lennox. You will find him at his chambers in the Temple.” 

“ I will write down a list of all the names I can remember 
on board the Orion. I could leave it with him to ferret them 
out. He is Edith’s husband’s brother, isn’t he ? I remember 
your naming him in your letters. I have money in Barbour’s 
hands. I can pay a pretty long bill, if there is any chance 
of success. Money, dear father, that I had meant for a 
different purpose ; so I shall only consider it as borrowed 
from you and Margaret.” 

“ Don’t do that,” said Margaret. “ You won’t risk it if 
you do. And it will be a risk ; only it is worth trying. You 
can sail from London as well as from Liverpool ? ” 

308 


Mischances 

“ To be sure, little goose. Wherever I feel water heaving 
under a plank, there I feel at home. I’ll pick up some craft 
or other to take me off, never fear. I won’t stay twenty-four 
hours in London, away from you on the one hand, and from 
somebody else on the other.” 

It was rather a comfort to Margaret that Frederick took 
it into his head to look over her shoulder as she wrote to 
Mr. Lennox. If she had not been thus compelled to write 
steadily and concisely on, she might have hesitated over 
many a word, and been puzzled to choose between many an 
expression, in the awkwardness of being the first to resume 
the intercourse of which the concluding event had been so 
unpleasant to both sides. However, the note was taken 
from her before she had even had time to look it over, and 
treasured up in a pocket-book, out of which fell a long lock 
of black hair, the sight of which caused Frederick’s eyes to 
glow with pleasure. 

“ Now you would like to see that, wouldn’t you ? ” said 
he. “ No ! you must wait till you see her herself. She is 
too perfect to be known by fragments. No mean brick shall 
be a specimen of the building of my palace.” 


CHAPTER XXXII 

MISCHANCES 

“ What ! remain to be 
Denounced— dragged, it may be, in chains.” 

Werner. 

All the next day they sate together — they three. Mr. Hale 
hardly ever spoke but when his children asked him questions, 
and forced him, as it were, into the present. Frederick’s 
grief was no more to be seen or heard ; the first paroxysm 
had passed over, and now he was ashamed of having been 

3°9 


North and South 

so battered down by emotion ; and, though his sorrow for 
the loss of his mother was a deep real feeling, and would 
last out his life, it was never to be spoken of again. 
Margaret, not so passionate at first, was more suffering now. 
At times she cried a good deal ; and her manner, even when 
speaking on indifferent things, had a mournful tenderness 
about it, which was deepened whenever her looks fell on 
Frederick, and she thought of his rapidly approaching 
departure. She was glad he was going, on her father’s 
account, however much she might grieve over it on her 
own. The anxious terror in which Mr. Hale lived, lest 
his son should be detected and captured, far outweighed the 
pleasure he derived from his presence. The nervousness 
had increased since Mrs. Hale’s death, probably because he 
dwelt upon it more exclusively. He started at every unusual 
sound, and was never comfortable unless Frederick sate 
out of the immediate view of any one entering the room. 
Towards evening he said — 

“ You will go with Frederick to the station, Margaret ? 
I shall want to know he is safely off. You will bring me 
word that he is clear of Milton, at any rate ? ” 

“ Certainly,” said Margaret. “ I shall like it, if you won’t 
be lonely without me, papa.” 

“ No, no ! I should always be fancying some one had 
known him, and that he had been stopped, unless you could 
tell me you had seen him off. And go to the Outwood 
station. It is quite as near, and not so many people about. 
Take a cab there. There is less risk of his being seen. 
What time is your train, Fred ? ” 

“ Ten minutes past six ; very nearly dark. So what will 
you do, Margaret ? ” 

“ Oh, I can manage. I am getting very brave and very 
hard. It is a well-lighted road all the way home, if it should 
be dark. But I was out last week much later.” 

Margaret was thankful when the parting was over — the 
parting from the dead mother and the living father. She 
hurried Frederick into the cab, in order to shorten a scene 

310 


Mischances 

which she saw was so bitterly painful to her father, who 
would accompany his son as he took his last look at his 
mother. Partly in consequence of this, and partly owing to 
one of the very common mistakes in the “ Railway Guide ” 
as to the times when trains arrive at the smaller stations, 
they found, on reaching Outwood, that they had nearly 
twenty minutes to spare. The booking-office was not open, 
so they could not even take the ticket. They accordingly 
went down the flight of steps that led to the level of the 
ground below the railway. There was a broad cinder-path 
diagonally crossing a field which lay along- side of the 
carriage-road, and they went there to walk backwards and 
forwards for the few minutes they had to spare. 

Margaret’s hand lay in Frederick’s arm. He took hold 
of it affectionately. 

“ Margaret ! I am going to consult Mr. Lennox as to 
the chance of exculpating myself so that I may return to 
England whenever I choose, more for your sake than for 
the sake of any one else. I can’t bear to think of your 
lonely position if anything should happen to my father. He 
looks sadly changed — terribly shaken. I wish you could get 
him to think of the Cadiz plan, for many reasons. What 
could you do if he were taken away ? You have no friend 
near. We are curiously bare of relations.” 

Margaret could hardly keep from crying at the tender 
anxiety with which Frederick was bringing before her an 
event which she herself felt was not very improbable, so 
severely had the cares of the last few months told upon 
Mr. Hale. But she tried to rally as she said — 

“ There have been such strange unexpected changes in 
my life during these last two years, that I feel more than 
ever that it is not worth while to calculate too closely what 
I should do if any future event took place. I try to think 
only upon the present.” She paused ; they were standing 
still for a moment close on the field side of the stile leading 
into the road ; the setting sun fe*l on their faces. Frederick 
held her hand in his, and looked with wistful anxiety into 

3 11 


North and South 

her face, reading there more care and trouble than she would 
betray by words. She went on — 

“We shall write often to one another, and I will promise 
— for I see it will set your mind at ease — to tell you every 

worry I have. Papa is she started a little, a hardly 

visible start — but Frederick felt the sudden motion of the 
hand he held, and turned his full face to the road, along 
which a horseman was slowly riding, just passing the very 
stile where they stood. Margaret bowed ; her bow was 
stiffly returned. 

“ Who is that ? ” said Frederick, almost before he was 
out of hearing. 

Margaret was a little drooping, a little flushed, as she 
replied — •“ Mr. Thornton ; you saw him before, you know.” 

“ Only his back. He is an unprepossessing-looking 
fellow. What a scowl he has ! ” 

“ Something has happened to vex him,” said Margaret 
apologetically. “ You would not have thought him unpre- 
possessing if you had seen him with mamma.” 

“ I fancy it must be time to go and take my ticket. If 
I had known how dark it would be, we wouldn’t have sent 
back the cab, Margaret.” 

“ Oh, don’t fidget about that. I can take a cab here, if 
I like ; or go back by the railroad, when I should have shops 
and people and lamps all the way from the Milton station- 
house. Don’t think of me ; take care of yourself. I am 
sick with the thought that Leonards may be in the same 
train with you. Look well into the carriage before you 
get in.” 

They went back to the station. Margaret insisted upon 
going into the full light of the flaring gas inside to take the 
ticket. Some idle-looking young men were lounging about 
with the station-master. Margaret thought she had seen 
the face of one of them before, and returned him a proud 
look of offended dignity for his somewhat impertinent stare 
of undisguised admiration. She went hastily to her brother, 
who was standing outside, and took hold of his arm. “ Have 

312 


Mischances 

you got your bag ? Let us walk about here on the platform,” 
said she, a little flurried at the idea of so soon being left 
alone, and her bravery oozing out rather faster than she 
liked to acknowledge even to herself. She heard a step 
following them along the flags ; it stopped when they stopped, 
looking out along the line and hearing the whizz of the 
coming train. They did not speak ; their hearts were too 
full. Another moment, and the train would be here; a 
minute more, and he would be gone. Margaret almost 
repented the urgency with which she had entreated him to 
go to London ; it was throwing more chances of detection 
in his way. If he had sailed for Spain by Liverpool, he 
might have been off in two or three hours. 

Frederick turned round, right facing the lamp, where the 
gas darted up in vivid anticipation of the train. A man in 
the dress of a railway porter started forward ; a bad-looking 
man, who seemed to have drunk himself into a state of 
brutality, although his senses were in perfect order. 

“ By your leave, miss ! ” said he, pushing Margaret rudely 
on one side, and seizing Frederick by the collar. 

“ Your name is Hale, I believe ? ” 

In an instant, how, Margaret did not see, for everything 
danced before her eyes — but, by some sleight of wrestling, 
Frederick had tripped him up, and he fell from the height 
of three or four feet, which the platform was elevated above 
the space of soft ground, by the side of the railroad. There 
he lay. 

“ Bun, run ! ” gasped Margaret. “ The train is here. It 
was Leonards, was it? oh, run! I will carry your bag.” 
And she took him by the arm to push him along with all 
her feeble force. A door was opened in a carriage — he 
jumped in ; and as he leant out to say, “ God bless you, 
Margaret ! ” the train rushed past her ; and she was left 
standing alone. She was so terribly sick and faint that she 
was thankful to be able to turn into the ladies’ waiting-room, 
and sit down for an instant. At first she could do nothing 
but gasp for breath. It was such a hurry ; such a sickening 

3 J 3 


North and South 

alarm ; such a near chance. If the train had not been there 
at the moment, the man would have jumped up again and 
called for assistance to arrest him. She wondered if the 
man had got up ; she tried to remember if she had seen him 
move ; she wondered if he could have been seriously hurt. 
She ventured out ; the platform was all alight, but still quite 
deserted ; she went to the end, and looked over, somewhat 
fearfully. No one was there ; and then she was glad she 
had made herself go and inspect, for otherwise terrible 
thoughts would have haunted her dreams. And, even as it 
was, she was so trembling and affrighted that she felt she 
cotild not walk home along the road, which did indeed seem 
lonely and dark, as she gazed down upon it from the blaze 
of the station. She would wait till the down train passed 
and take her seat in it. But what if Leonards recognised 
her as Frederick’s companion ! She peered about, before 
venturing into the booking-office to take her ticket. There 
were only some railway officials standing about ; and talking 
loud to one another. 

“ So Leonards has been drinking again ! ” said one, seem- 
ingly in authority. “ He’ll need all his boasted influence to 
keep his place this time.” 

“ Where is he ? ” asked another, while Margaret, her back 
towards them, was counting her change with trembling fingers, 
not daring to turn round until she heard the answer to this 
question. 

“ I don’t know. He came in not five minutes ago, with 
some long story or other about a fall he’d had, swearing 
awfully ; and wanted to borrow some money from me to go 
to London by the next up-train. He made all sorts of tipsy 
promises, but I’d something else to do than listen to him ; I 
told him to go about his business ; and he went off at the 
front door.” 

“ He’s at the nearest vaults, I’ll be bound,” said the first 
speaker. “ Your money would have gone there too, if you’d 
been such a fool as to lend it.” 

“ Catch me ! I knew better what his London meant. 

3i4 


Peace 

Why, he has never paid me off that five shillings ** — and so 
they went on. 

And now all Margaret’s anxiety was for the train to come. 
She hid herself once more in the ladies’ waiting-room, and 
fancied every noise was Leonards’ step — every loud and 
boisterous voice was his. But no one came near her until the 
train drew up ; when she was civilly helped into a carriage 
by a porter, into whose face she durst not look till they were 
in motion, and then she saw that it was not Leonards. 


CHAPTER XXXIII 

PEACE 

** Sleep on, my love, in thy cold bed, 

Never to be disquieted ! 

My last Good Night — thou wilt not wake 
Till I thy fate shall overtake.” 

Dr. King. 

Home seemed unnaturally quiet after all this terror and noisy 
commotion. Her father had seen all due preparation made 
for her refreshment on her return ; and then sate down again 
in his accustomed chair, to fall into one of his sad waking 
dreams. Dixon had got Mary Higgins to scold and direct in 
the kitchen ; and her scolding was not the less energetic 
because it was delivered in an angry whisper ; for speaking 
above her breath she would have thought irreverent, as long 
as there was any one dead lying in the house. Margaret had 
resolved not to mention the crowning and closing affright 
to her father. There was no use in speaking about it; 
it had ended well; the only thing to be feared was lest 
Leonards should in some way borrow money enough to 
effect his purpose of following Frederick to London, and 
hunting him out there. But there were immense chances 
against the success of any such plan ; and Margaret 

3i5 


North and South 

determined not to torment herself by thinking of what she 
could do nothing to prevent. Frederick would be as much 
on his guard as she could put him ; and in a day or two at 
most he would be safely out of England. 

“ I suppose we shall hear from Mr. Bell to-morrow,” said 
Margaret. 

“ Yes,” replied her father, “ I suppose so.” 

“If he can come, he will be here to-morrow evening, I 
should think.” 

“If he cannot come, I shall ask Mr. Thornton to go with 
mg to the funeral. I cannot go alone. I should break down 
utterly.” 

“ Don’t ask Mr. Thornton, papa. Let me go with you,” 
said Margaret impetuously. 

“ You ! My dear, women do not generally go.” 

“ No; because they can’t control themselves. Women of 
our class don’t go, because they have no power over their 
emotions, and yet are ashamed of showing them. Poor 
women go, and don’t care if they are seen overwhelmed with 
grief. But I promise you, papa, that if you will let me go, I 
will be no trouble. Don’t have a stranger, and leave me out. 
Dear papa ! if Mr. Bell cannot come, I shall go. I won’t 
urge my wish against your will, if he does.” 

Mr. Bell could not come. He had the gout. It was a 
most affectionate letter, and expressed great and true regret 
for his inability to attend. He hoped to come and pay them 
a visit soon, if they would have him ; his Milton property 
required some looking after, .and his agent had written to him 
to say that his presence was absolutely necessary ; or else he 
had avoided coming near Milton as long as he could ; and 
now the only thing that would reconcile him to this necessary 
visit was the idea that he should see, and might possibly be 
able to comfort, his old friend. 

Margaret had all the difficulty in the world to persuade 
her father not to invite Mr. Thornton. She had an in- 
describable repugnance to this step being taken. The night 
before the funeral, came a stately note from Mrs. Thornton 

316 


Peace 

to Miss Hale, saying that, at her son’s desire, their carriage 
should attend the funeral, if it would not be disagreeable to 
the family. Margaret tossed the note to her father. 

“ Oh, don’t let us have these forms,” said she. “ Let us 
go alone — you and me, papa. They don’t care for us, or else 
he would have offered to go himself, and not have proposed 
this sending an empty carriage.” 

“ I thought you were so extremely averse to his going, 
Margaret,” said Mr. Hale in some surprise. 

“ And so I am. I don’t want him to come at all ; and I 
should especially dislike the idea of our asking him. But this 
seems such a mockery of mourning that I did not expect it 
from him.” She startled her father by bursting into tears. 
She had been so subdued in her grief, so thoughtful for 
others, so gentle and patient in all things, that he could 
not understand her impatient ways to-night ; she seemed 
agitated and restless ; and, at all the tenderness which her 
father in his turn now lavished upon her, she only cried the 
more. 

She passed so bad a night that she was ill prepared for 
the additional anxiety caused by a letter received from 
Frederick. Mr. Lennox was out of town ; his clerk said that 
he would return by the following Tuesday at the latest ; that 
he might possibly be at home on Monday. Consequently, 
after some consideration, Frederick had determined upon 
remaining in London a day or two longer. He had thought 
of coming down to Milton again ; the temptation had been 
very strong ; but the idea of Mr. Bell domesticated in his 
father’s house, and the alarm he had received at the last 
moment at the railway station, had made him resolve to stay 
in London. Margaret might be assured he would take every 
precaution against being tracked by Leonards. Margaret 
was thankful that she received this letter while her father 
was absent in her mother’s room. If he had been present, 
he would have expected her to read it aloud to him, and it 
would have raised in him a state of nervous alarm which she . 
would have found it impossible to soothe away. There was 

317 - 


North and South 

not merely the fact, which disturbed her excessively, of 
Frederick’s detention in London, but there were allusions to 
the recognition at the last moment at Milton, and the 
possibility of a pursuit, which made her blood run cold ; and 
how then would it have affected her father ? Many a time 
did Margaret repent of having suggested and urged on the 
plan of consulting Mr. Lennox. At the moment, it had 
seemed as if it would occasion so little delay — add so little to 
the ^ apparently small chances of detection ; and yet every- 
thing that had since occurred had tended to make it so 
undesirable. Margaret battled hard against this regret of 
hers for what could not now be helped ; this self-reproach for 
having said what had at the time appeared to be wise, but 
which after-events were proving to have been so foolish. 
But her father was in too depressed a state of mind and body 
to struggle healthily ; he would succumb to all these causes 
for morbid regret over what could not be recalled. Margaret 
summoned up all her forces to her aid. Her father seemed 
to have forgotten that they had any reason to expect a letter 
from Frederick that morning. He was absorbed in one idea 
— that the last visible token of the presence of his wife was to 
be carried away from him, and hidden from his sight. He 
trembled pitifully as the undertaker’s man was arranging 
his crape draperies around him. He looked wistfully at Mar- 
garet ; and when released, he tottered towards her murmuring, 
“ Pray for me, Margaret. I have no strength left in me. I 
cannot pray. I give her up because I must. I try to bear 
it ; indeed I do. I know it is God’s will. But I cannot see 
why she died. Pray for me, Margaret, that I may have faith 
to pray. It is a great strait, my child.” 

Margaret sat by him in the coach, almost supporting 
him in her arms ; and repeating all the noble verses of holy 
comfort, or texts expressive of faithful resignation, that she 
could remember. Her voice never faltered ; and she herself 
gained strength by doing this. Her father’s lips moved 
after her, repeating the well-known texts as her words 
Suggested them ; it was terrible to see the patient struggling 

3i8 


Peace 

effort to obtain the resignation which he had not strength to 
take into his heart as a part of himself. 

Margaret’s fortitude nearly gave way as Dixon, with a 
slight motion of her hand, directed her notice to Nicholas 
Higgins and his daughter, standing a little aloof, but deeply 
attentive to the ceremonial. Nicholas wore his usual fustian 
clothes, but had a bit of black stuff sewn round his hat — a 
mark of mourning which he had never shown to his daughter 
Bessy’s memory. But Mr. Hale saw nothing. He went on 
repeating to himself, mechanically as it were, all the funeral 
service as it was read by the officiating clergyman ; he sighed 
twice or thrice when all was ended ; and then, putting his 
hand on Margaret’s arm, he mutely entreated to be led away, 
as if he were blind, and she his faithful guide. 

Dixon sobbed aloud ; she covered her face with her hand- 
kerchief, and was so absorbed in her own grief that she did 
not perceive that the crowd, attracted on such occasions, 
was dispersing, till she was spoken to by some one close at 
hand. It was Mr. Thornton. He had been present all the 
time, standing, with head bent, behind a group of people, so 
that, in fact, no one had recognised him. 

“ I beg your pardon — but, can you tell me how Mr. Hale 
is ? And Miss Hale, too ? I should like to know how they 
both are.” 

“ Of course, sir. They are much as is to be expected. 
Master is terribly broke down. Miss Hale bears up better 
than likely.” 

Mr. Thornton would rather have heard that she was 
suffering the natural sorrow. In the first place, there was 
selfishness enough in him to have taken pleasure in the idea 
that his great love might come in to comfort and console 
her ; much the same kind of strange passionate pleasure 
which comes stinging through a mother’s heart, when her 
drooping infant nestles close to her, and is dependent upon 
her for everything. But this delicious vision of what might 
have been — in which, in spite of all Margaret’s repulse, he 
would have indulged only a few days ago — was miserably 

3*9 


North and South 

disturbed by the recollection of what he had seen near the 
Out wood station. “ Miserably disturbed ! ” that is not strong 
enough. He was haunted by the remembrance of the hand- 
some young man, with whom she stood in an attitude of 
such familiar confidence ; and the remembrance shot through 
him like an agony, till it made him clench his hands tight in 
order to subdue the pain. At that late hour, so far from 
home ! It took a great moral effort to galvanise his trust — 
ere^hile so perfect — in Margaret’s pure and exquisite 
maidenliness into life ; as soon as the effort ceased, his trust 
dropped down dead and powerless : and all sorts of wild 
fancies chased each other like dreams, through his mind. 
Here was a little bit of miserable, gnawing confirmation. 
“ She bore up better than likely ” under this grief. She had 
then some hope to look to, so bright that even in her affec- 
tionate nature it could come in to lighten the dark hours of 
a daughter newly made motherless. Yes ! he knew how she 
would love. He had not loved her without gaining that 
instinctive knowledge of what capabilities were in her. Her 
soul would walk in glorious sunlight if any man was worthy, 
by his power of loving, to win back her love. Even in her 
mourning she would rest with a peaceful faith upon his 
sympathy. His sympathy ! Whose ? That other man’s. 
And that it was another was enough to make Mr. Thornton’s 
pale grave face grow doubly wan and stern at Dixon’s 
answer. 

“ I suppose I may call,” said he coldly. “ On Mr. Hale, 
I mean. He will perhaps admit me after to-morrow or so.” 

He spoke as if the answer were a matter of indifference 
to him. But it was not so. For all his pain, he longed to 
see the author of it. Although he hated Margaret at times, 
when he thought of that gentle, familiar attitude and all the 
attendant circumstances, he had a restless desire to renew 
her picture in his mind — a longing for the very atmosphere, 
she breathed. He was in the Charybdis of passion, and 
must perforce circle and circle ever nearer round the fatal 
centre. 


320 


False and True 

“ I dare say, sir, master will see yon. He was very sorry 
to have to deny you the other day ; but circumstances was 
not agreeable just then.” 

For some reason or other, Dixon never named this inter- 
view that she had had with Mr. Thornton to Margaret. It 
might have been mere chance, but so it was that Margaret 
never heard that he had attended her poor mother’s 
funeral. 


CHAPTER XXXIV 

FALSE AND TRUE 

“ Truth will fail thee never, never t 

Though thy bark be tempest -driven, 

Though each plank be rent and riven, 

Truth will bear thee on for ever I ” 

Anon. 

The “ bearing up better than likely ” was a terrible strain 
upon Margaret. Sometimes she thought she must give way, 
and cry out with pain, as the sudden sharp thought came 
across her, even during her apparently cheerful conversations 
with her father, that she had no longer a mother. About 
Frederick, too, there was great uneasiness. The Sunday 
post intervened, and interfered with their London letters; 
and on Tuesday Margaret was surprised and disheartened 
to find that there was still no letter. She was quite in the 
dark as to his plans, and her father was miserable at all this 
uncertainty. It broke in upon his lately acquired habit of 
sitting still in one easy-chair for half a day together. He 
kept pacing up and down the room ; then out of it ; and she 
heard him upon the landing opening and shutting the bed- 
room doors, without any apparent object. She tried to 
tranquillise him by reading aloud; but it was evident he 
could not listen for long together. How thankful she was 

321 y 


North and South 

then, that she had kept to herself the additional cause for 
anxiety produced by their encounter with Leonards. She 
was thankful to hear Mr. Thornton announced. His visit 
would force her father’s thoughts into another channel. 

He came up straight to her father, whose hands he took 
and wrung without a word — holding them in his for a minute 
or two, during which time his face, his eyes, his look, told 
of more sympathy than could be put into words. Then he 
turned to Margaret. Not “ better than likely ” did she look. 
Her stately beauty was dimmed with much watching and 
with many tears. The expression on her countenance was 
of gentle, patient sadness — nay, of positive present suffering. 
He had not meant to greet her otherwise than with his late 
studied coldness of demeanour ; but he could not help going 
up to her, as she stood a little aside, rendered timid by the 
uncertainty of his manner of late, and saying the few 
necessary commonplace words in so tender a voice, that her 
eyes filled with tears, and she turned away to hide her 
emotion. She took her work and sate down very quiet and 
silent. Mr. Thornton’s heart beat quick and strong, and for 
the time he utterly forgot the Outwood lane. He tried to 
talk to Mr. Hale : and — his presence always a certain kind 
of pleasure to Mr. Hale, as his power and decision made 
him, and his opinions, a safe, sure port — was unusually 
agreeable to her father, as Margaret saw. 

Presently Dixon came to the door and said, “ Miss Hale, 
you are wanted.” 

Dixon’s manner was so flurried that Margaret turned 
sick at heart. Something had happened to Fred. She had 
no doubt of that. It was well that her father and Mr. 
Thornton were so much occupied by their conversation. 

“ What is it, Dixon ? ” asked Margaret, the moment she 
had shut the drawing-room door. 

“ Come this way, miss,” said Dixon, opening the door of 
what had been Mrs. Hale’s bed-chamber, now Margaret’s, 
for her father refused to sleep there again after his wife’s 
death. “It’s nothing, miss,” said Dixon, choking a little. 

322 


False and True 

“ Only a police-inspector. He wants to see you, miss. But 
I dare say, it’s about nothing at all.” 

“ Did he name ” asked Margaret almost inaudibly. 

“No, miss ; he named nothing. He only asked if you 
lived here, and if he could speak to you. Martha went to 
the door, and let him in ; she has shown him into master’s 
study. I went to him myself, to try if that would do ; but 
no — it’s you, miss, he wants.” 

Margaret did not speak again till her hand was on the 
lock of the study door. Here she turned round and said, 
“ Take care papa does not come down. Mr. Thornton is with 
him now.” 

The inspector was almost daunted by the haughtiness of 
her manner as she entered. There was something of indigna- 
tion expressed in her countenance, but so kept down and con- 
trolled that it gave her a superb air of disdain. There was 
no surprise, no curiosity. She stood awaiting the opening of 
his business there. Not a question did she ask. 

“ I beg your pardon, ma’am, but my duty obliges me to 
ask you a few plain questions. A man has died at the In- 
firmary, in consequence of a fall, received at Outwood station, 
between the hours of five and six on Thursday evening, the 
twenty-sixth instant. At the time, this fall did not seem of 
much consequence; but it was rendered fatal, the doctors 
say, by the presence of some internal complaint, and the 
man’s own habit of drinking.” 

The large dark eyes, gazing straight into the inspector’s 
face, dilated a little. Otherwise there was no motion percep- 
tible to his experienced observation. Her lips swelled out 
into a richer curve than ordinary, owing to the enforced 
tension of the muscles, but he did not know what was their 
usual appearance, so as to recognise the unwonted sullen 
defiance of the firm sweeping lines. She never blenched or 
trembled. She fixed him with her eye. Now — as he paused 
before going on, she said, almost as if she would encourage 
him in telling his tale — “ Well — go on ! ” 

“It is supposed that an inquest will have to be held ; 

323 


North and South 

there is some slight evidence to prove that the blow, or push, 
or scuffle that caused the fall, was provoked by this poor 
fellow’s half-tipsy impertinence to a young lady, walking 
with the man who pushed the deceased over the edge of the 
platform. This much was observed by some one on the 
platform, who, however, thought no more about the matter, 
as the blow seemed of slight consequence. There is also 
some reason to identify the lady with yourself ; in which 
calse ” 

“ I was not there,” said Margaret, still keeping her 
expressionless eyes fixed on his face, with the unconscious 
look of a sleep-walker. 

The inspector bowed but did not speak. The lady stand- 
ing before him showed no emotion, no fluttering fear, no 
anxiety, no desire to end the interview. The information he 
had received was very vague ; one of the porters, rushing 
out to be in readiness for the train, had seen a scuffle, at the 
other end of the platform, between Leonards and a gentle- 
man accompanied by a lady, but heard no noise ; and, before 
the train had got to its full speed after starting, he had been 
almost knocked down by the headlong run of the enraged, 
half-intoxicated Leonards, swearing and cursing awfully. 
He had not thought any more about it, till his evidence was 
routed out by the inspector, who, on making some further 
inquiry at the railroad station, had heard from the station- 
master that a young lady and gentleman had been there 
about that hour — the lady remarkably handsome — and said, 
by some grocer’s assistant present at the time, to be a Miss 
Hale, living at Crampton, whose family dealt at his shop. 
There was no certainty that the one lady and gentleman 
were identical with the other pair, but there was great pro- 
bability. Leonards himself had gone, half-mad with rage 
and pain, to the nearest gin-palace for comfort; and his 
tipsy words had not been attended to by the busy waiters 
there ; they, however, remembered his starting up and 
cursing himself for not having sooner thought of the electric 
telegraph, for some purpose unknown; and they believed 

324 


False and True 

that he left with the idea of going there. On his way, over- 
come by pain or drink, he had lain down in the road, where 
the police had found him and taken him to the Infirmary : 
there he had never recovered sufficient consciousness to give 
any distinct account of his fall, although once or twice he 
had had glimmerings of sense sufficient to make the authori- 
ties send for the nearest magistrate, in hopes that he might 
be able to take down the dying man’s deposition of the 
cause of his death. But when the magistrate had come, he 
was rambling about being at sea, and mixing up names of 
captains and lieutenants in an indistinct manner with those 
of his fellow-porters at the railway ; and his last words were 
a curse on the “ Cornish trick ” which had, he said, made 
him a hundred pounds poorer than he ought to have been. 
The inspector ran all this over in his mind — the vagueness of 
the evidence to prove that Margaret had been at the station 
— the unflinching, calm denial which she gave to such a 
supposition. She stood awaiting his next word with a com- 
posure that appeared supreme. 

“ Then, madam, I have your denial that you were the 
lady accompanying the gentleman who struck the blow, 
or gave the push, which caused the death of this poor 
man ? ” 

A quick, sharp pain went through Margaret’s brain. 
“ Oh God ! that I knew Frederick were safe ! ” A deep 
observer of human countenances might have seen the momen- 
tary agony shoot out of her great gloomy eyes, like the 
torture of some creature brought to bay. But the inspector, 
though a very keen, was not a very deep, observer. He was 
a little struck, notwithstanding, by the form of the answer, 
which sounded like a mechanical repetition of her first reply 
— not changed and modified in shape so as to meet his last 
question. 

“ I was not there,” said she slowly and heavily. And all 
this time she never closed her eyes, or ceased from that 
glassy, dream-like stare. His quick suspicions were aroused 
bv this dull echo of her former denial. It was as if she had 

3 2 5 


North and South 

forced herself to one untruth, and had been stunned out of 
all power of varying it. 

He put up his book of notes in a very deliberate manner. 
Then he looked up ; she had not moved any more than if 
she had been some great Egyptian statue. 

“ I hope you will not think me impertinent when I say 
that I may have to call on you again. I may have to summon 
you to appear on the inquest, and prove an alibi, if my wit- 
nesses ” (it was but one who had recognised her) “ persist in 
deposing to your presence at the unfortunate event.” He 
looked at her sharply. She was still perfectly quiet — no 
change of colour, or darker shadow of guilt, on her proud 
face. He thought to have seen her wince ; he did not know 
Margaret Hale. He was a little abashed by her regal com- 
posure. It must have been a mistake of identity. He 
went on — 

“It is very unlikely, ma’am, that I shall have to do 
anything of the kind. I hope you will excuse me for doing 
what is only my duty, although it may appear. impertinent.” 

Margaret bowed her head as he went towards the door. 
Her lips were stiff and dry. She could not speak even the 
common words of farewell. But suddenly she walked for- 
wards, and opened the study door, and preceded him to the 
door of the house, which she threw wide open for his exit. 
She kept her eyes upon him in the same dull, fixed manner, 
until he was fairly out of the house. She shut the door, 
and went half-way into the study ; then turned back, as if 
moved by some passionate impulse, and locked the door 
inside. 

Then she went into the study, paused — tottered forward 
— paused again — swayed for an instant where she stood, and 
fell prone on the floor in a dead swoon. 


326 


Expiation 


CHAPTER XXXV 

EXPIATION 

“ There’s nought so finely spun 
But it cometh to the sun.” 

Mr. Thornton sate on and on. He felt that his company 
gave pleasure to Mr. Hale ; and was touched by the half- 
spoken wishful entreaty that he would remain a little longer — 
the plaintive “ Don’t go yet,” which his poor friend put forth 
from time to time. He wondered Margaret did not return ; 
but it was with no view of seeing her that he lingered. For 
the hour — and in the presence of one who was so thoroughly 
feeling the nothingness of earth — he was reasonable and self- 
controlled. He was deeply interested in all her father said 

“ Of death, and of the heavy lull, 

And of the brain that has grown dull.” 

It was curious how the presence of Mr. Thornton had 
power over Mr. Hale to make him unlock the secret thoughts 
which he kept shut up even from Margaret. Whether it was 
that her sympathy would be so keen, and show itself in so 
lively a manner, that he was afraid of the reaction upon 
himself, or whether it was that to his speculative mind all 
kinds of doubts presented themselves at such a time, pleading 
and crying aloud to be resolved into certainties, and that he 
knew she would have shrunk from the expression of any 
such doubts — nay, from him himself as capable of conceiving 
them — whatever was the reason, he could unburden himself 
better to Mr. Thornton than to her of all the thoughts and 
fancies and fears that had been frost-bound in his brain till 
now. Mr. Thornton said very little ; but every sentence he 
uttered added to Mr. Hale’s reliance on and regard for him. 
Was it that he paused in the expression of some remembered 
agony, Mr. Thornton’s two or three words would complete 
the sentence, and show how deeply its meaning was entered 

3 2 7 


North and South 

into. Was it a doubt — a fear — a wandering uncertainty- 
seeking rest, but finding none — so tear-blinded were its eyes 
— Mr. Thornton, instead of being shocked, seemed to have 
passed through that very stage of thought himself, and could 
suggest where the exact ray of light was to be found, which 
should make the dark places plain. Man of action as he 
was, busy in the world’s great battle, there was a deeper 
religion binding him to God in his heart, in spite of his 
strong wilfulness, through all his mistakes, than Mr. Hale 
had ever dreamed. They never spoke of such things again, 
as it happened; but this one conversation made them 
peculiar people to each other ; knit them together, in a way 
which no loose, indiscriminate talking about sacred things 
can ever accomplish. When all are admitted, how can there 
be a Holy of Holies ? 

And all this while, Margaret lay as still and white as 
death on the study floor ! She had sunk under her burden. 
It had been heavy in weight and long carried ; and she had 
been very meek and patient, till all at once her faith had 
given way, and she had groped in vain for help ! There was 
a pitiful contraction of suffering upon her beautiful brows, 
although there was no other sign of consciousness remaining. 
The mouth — a little while ago, so sullenly projected in 
defiance — was relaxed and livid. 

“ E par che de la sua labbia si mova 
Uno spirto soave e pien d’amore, 

Chi va dicendo a l’anima : sospira ! ” 

The first symptom of returning life was a quivering about 
the lips — a little mute soundless attempt at speech ; but the 
eyes were still closed ; and the quivering sank into stillness. 
Then, feebly leaning on her arms for an instant to steady 
herself, Margaret gathered herself up, and rose. Her comb 
had fallen out of her hair ; and with an intuitive desire to 
efface the traces of weakness, and bring herself into order 
again, she sought for it, although from time to time, in the 
course of the search, she had to sit down and recover 
strength. Her head drooped forwards — her hands meekly 

328 


Expiation 

laid one upon the other — she tried to recall the force of her 
temptation, by endeavouring to remember the details which 
had thrown her into such deadly fright ; but she could not. 
She only understood two facts — that Frederick had been in 
danger of being pursued and detected in London, as not only 
guilty of manslaughter, but as the more unpardonable leader 
of the mutiny, and that she had lied to save him. There 
was one comfort ; her lie had saved him, if only by gaining 
some additional time. If the inspector came again to- 
morrow, after she had received the letter she longed for to 
assure her of her brother’s safety, she would brave shame, 
and stand in her bitter penance — she the lofty Margaret — 
acknowledging before a crowded justice-room, if need were, 
that she had been as “ a dog, and done this thing.” But if 
he came before she heard from Frederick ; if he returned, as 
he had half threatened, in a few hours, why ! she would tell 
that lie again ; though how the words would come out, after 
all this terrible pause for reflection and self-reproach, without 
betraying her falsehood, she did not know, she could not tell. 
But her repetition of it would gain time— time for Frederick. 

She was roused by Dixon’s entrance into the room ; she 
had just been letting out Mr. Thornton. 

He had hardly gone ten steps in the street, before a 
passing omnibus stopped close by him, and a man got down, 
and came up to him, touching his hat as he did so. It was 
the police-inspector. 

Mr. Thornton had obtained for him his first situation in 
the police, and had heard from time to time of the progress 
of his protege, but they had not often met, and at first Mr. 
Thornton did not remember him. 

“My name is Watson — George Watson, sir, that you 
got” 

“ Ah, yes ! I recollect. Why, you are getting on famously, 
I hear.” 

“ Yes, sir. I ought to thank you, sir. But it is on a 
little matter of business I made so bold as to speak to you 
now. I believe you were the magistrate who attended to 

329 


North and South 

take down the deposition of a poor man who died in the 
Infirmary last night.” 

“ Yes,” replied Mr. Thornton. “ I went and heard some 
kind /of a rambling statement, which the clerk said was of no 
great use. I’m afraid he was but a drunken fellow, though 
there is no doubt he came to his death by violence at last. 
One of my mother’s servants was engaged to him, I believe, 
and she is in great distress to-day. What about him ? ” 

“ Why, sir, his death is oddly mixed up with somebody in 
the house I saw you coming out of just now ; it was a Mr. 
Hale’s, I believe.” 

“ Yes ! ” said Mr. Thornton, turning sharp round and 
looking into the inspector’s face with sudden interest. 
“ What about it ? ” 4 

“ Why, sir, it seems to me that I have got a pretty 
distinct chain of evidence, inculpating a gentleman who was 
walking with Miss Hale that night at the Outwood station, 
as the man who struck or pushed Leonards off the platform 
and so caused his death. But the young lady denies that 
she was there at the time.” 

“ Miss Hale denies she was there ! ” repeated Mr. Thorn- 
ton, in an altered voice. “ Tell me, what evening was it ? 
What time ? ” 

“About six o’clock, on the evening of Thursday, the 
twenty-sixth.” 

They walked on, side by side, in silence for a minute or 
two. The inspector was the first to speak. 

“ You see, sir, there is like to be a coroner’s inquest ; and 
I’ve got a young man who is pretty positive, — at least he 
was at first ; — since he has heard of the young lady’s denial, 
he says he should not like to swear ; but still he’s pretty 
positive that he saw Miss Hale at the station, walking about 
with a gentleman, not five minutes before the time when one 
of the porters saw a scuffle, which he set down to some of 
Leonards’ impudence — but which led to the fall which 
caused his death. And seeing you come out of the very 
house, sir, I thought I might make bold to ask if — you 

33o 


Expiation 

see, it’s always awkward having to do with cases of dis- 
puted identity, and one doesn’t like to doubt the word of 
a respectable young woman unless one has strong proof to 
the contrary.” 

“ And she denied having been at the station that even- 
ing ! ” repeated Mr. Thornton, in a low, brooding tone. 

“ Yes, sir, twice over, as distinct as could be. I told her 
I should call again, but seeing you just as I was on my way 
back from questioning the young man who said it was her, I 
thought I would ask your advice, both as the magistrate who 
saw Leonards on his death-bed, and as the gentleman who 
got me my berth in the force.” 

“ You were quite right,” said Mr. Thornton. “ Don’t 
take any steps till you have seen me again.” 

“The young lady will expect me to call, from what I 
said.” 

“ I only want to delay you an hour. It’s now three. 
Come to my warehouse at four.” 

“ Very well, sir ! ” 

And they parted company. Mr. Thornton hurried to his 
warehouse, and, sternly forbidding his clerks to allow any 
one to interrupt him, he went his way to his own private 
room, and locked the door. Then he indulged himself in 
the torture of thinking it all over, and realising every detail. 
How could he have lulled himself into the unsuspicious calm 
in which her tearful image had mirrored itself not two hours 
before, till he had weakly pitied her and yearned towards 
her, and forgotten the savage, distrustful jealousy with 
which the sight of her — and that unknown to him — at such 
an hour —in such a place — had inspired him ! How could 
one so pure have stooped from her decorous and noble 
manner of bearing ! But was it decorous — was it ? He 
hated himself for the idea that forced itself upon him, just 
for an instant — no more — and yet, while it was present, 
thrilled him with its old potency of attraction towards her 
image. And then this falsehood — how terrible must be 
some dread of shame to be revealed — for, after all, the 

33 1 


North and South 

provocation given by such a man as Leonards was when 
excited by drinking might, in all probability, be more than 
enough to justify any one who came forward to state the 
circumstances openly and without reserve ! How creeping 
and deadly that fear which could bow down the truthful 
Margaret to falsehood ? He could almost pity her. What 
would be the end of it ! She could not have considered all 
she was entering upon, if there was an inquest and the 
young man came forward. Suddenly he started up. There 
should be no inquest. He would save Margaret. He would 
take the responsibility of preventing the inquest, the issue 
of which, from the uncertainty of the medical testimony 
(which he had vaguely heard the night before, from the 
surgeon in attendance), could be but doubtful; the doctors 
had discovered an iqtemal disease far advanced, and sure 
to prove fatal ; they had stated that death might have been 
accelerated by the fall, or by the subsequent drinking and 
exposure to cold. If he had but known how Margaret 
would have become involved in the affair — if he had but 
foreseen that he would have stained her whiteness by a 
falsehood, he could have saved her by a word; for the 
question, of inquest or no inquest, had hung trembling in 
the balance only the night before. Miss Hale might love 
another — was indifferent and contemptuous to him — but he 
would yet do her faithful acts of service of which she should 
never know. He might despise her, but the woman whom 
he had once loved should be kept from shame ; and shame 
it would be to pledge herself to a he in a public court, or 
otherwise to stand and acknowledge her reason for desiring 
darkness rather than light. 

Very grey and stern did Mr. Thornton look, as he passed 
out through his wondering clerks. He was away about 
half-an-hour ; and scarcely less stern did he look when he 
returned, although his errand had been successful. 

He wrote two lines on a slip of paper, put it in an 
envelope, and sealed it up. This he gave to one of the 
clerks, saying — 


332 


Expiation 

“I appointed Watson — he who was a packer in the 
warehouse, and who went into the police — to call on me at 
four o’clock. I have just met with a gentlemen from 
Liverpool who wishes to see me before he leaves town. 
Take care to give this note to Watson when he calls.” 

The note contained these words — 

“ There will be no inquest. Medical evidence not suf- 
ficient to justify it. Take no further steps. I have not seen 
the coroner ; but I will take the responsibility.” 

“ Well,” thought Watson, “ it relieves me from an 
awkward job. None of my witnesses seemed certain of 
anything except the young woman. She was clear and 
distinct enough; the porter at the railroad had seen a 
scuffle ; or when he found it was likely to bring him in as a 
witness, then it might not have been a scuffle, only a little 
larking, and Leonards might have jumped off the platform 
himself ; — he would not stick firm to anything. And 
Jennings, the grocer’s shopman — well, he was not quite so 
bad, but I doubt if I could have got him up to an oath after 
he heard that Miss Hale flatly denied it. It would have 
been a troublesome job and no satisfaction. And now I 
must go and tell them they won’t be wanted.” 

He accordingly presented himself again at Mr. Hale’s 
that evening. Her father and Dixon would fain have per- 
suaded Margaret to go to bed ; but they, neither of them, 
knew the reason for her low continued refusals to do so. 
Dixon had learnt part of the truth — but only part. Margaret 
would not tell any human being of what she had said, and 
she did not reveal the fatal termination to Leonards’ fall 
from the platform. So Dixon’s curiosity combined with her 
allegiance to urge Margaret to go to rest, which her appear- 
ance, as she lay on the sofa, showed but too clearly that she 
required. She did not speak except when spoken to; she 
tried to smile back in reply to her father’s anxious looks 
and words of tender inquiry; but, instead of a smile, the 
wan lips resolved themselves into a sigh. He was so 
miserably uneasy that, at last, she consented to go into her 

333 


North and South 

\ 

own room, and prepare for going to bed. She was indeed 
inclined to give up the idea that the inspector would call 
again that night, as it was already past nine o’clock. 

She stood by her father, holding on to the back of his 
chair. 

“ You will go to bed soon, papa, won’t you ? Don’t sit 
up alone ! ” 

What his answer was she did not hear ; the words were 
lost in the far smaller point of sound that magnified itself to 
her fears, and filled her brain. There was a low ring at the 
door-bell. 

She kissed her father and glided downstairs, with a 
rapidity of motion of which no one would have thought her 
capable who had seen her the minute before. She put aside 
Dixon. 

“ Don’t come ; I will open the door. I know it is him — 
I can — I must manage it all myself.” 

“ As you please, miss ! ” said Dixon testily ; but in a 
moment afterwards, she added, “ But you’re not fit for it. 
You are more dead than alive.” 

“ Am I ? ” said Margaret, turning round and showing her 
eyes all aglow with strange fire, her cheeks flushed, though 
her lips were baked and livid still. 

She opened the door to the inspector, and preceded him 
into the study. She placed the candle on the table, and 
snuffed it carefully, before she turned round and faced him. 

“You are late!” said she. “Well?” She held her 
breath for the answer. 

“I’m sorry to have given any unnecessary trouble, 
ma’am : for, after all, they’ve given up all thoughts of 
holding an inquest. I have had other work to do and 
other people to see, or I should have been here before 
now.” 

“ Then it is ended, ,v said Margaret. “ There is to be no 
further inquiry.” 

“ I believe I’ve got Mr. Thornton’s note about me,” said 
the inspector, fumbling in his pocket-book. 

334 


Expiation 

“ Mr. Thornton’s ! ” said Margaret. 

“ Yes, he’s a magistrate — ah ! here it is.” She could 
not see to read it — no, not although she was close to 
the candle. The words swam before her. But she held 
it in her hand, and looked at it as if she were intently 
studying it. 

“ I’m sure, ma’am, it’s a great weight off my mind ; for 
the evidence was so uncertain, you see, that the man had 
received any blow at all, and if any question of identity came 
in, it so complicated the case, as I told Mr. Thornton ’ ’ 

“ Mr. Thornton ! ” said Margaret again. 

“ I met him this morning, just as he was coming out of 
this house ; and, as he’s an old friend of mine, besides being 
the magistrate who saw Leonards last night, I made bold to 
tell him of my difficulty.” 

Margaret sighed deeply. She did not want to hear any 
more ; she was afraid alike of what she had heard, and of 
what she might hear. She wished that the man would go. 
She forced herself to speak. 

“ Thank you for calling. It is very late. I dare say it is 
past ten o’clock. Oh ! here is the note ! ” she continued, 
suddenly interpreting the meaning of the hand held out to 
receive it. He was putting it up, when she said, “ I think it 
is a cramped, dazzling sort of writing. I could not read it ; 
will you just read it to me ? ” 

He read it aloud to her. 

“Thank you. You told Mr. Thornton that I was not 
there ? ” 

“ Oh, of course, ma’am. I’m sorry now that I acted 
upon information which seems to have been so erroneous. 
At first the young man was so positive ; and now he says 
that he doubted all along, and hopes that his mistake won’t 
have occasioned you such annoyance as to lose their shop 
your custom. Good night, ma’am.” 

“ Good night.” She rang the bell for Dixon to show him 
out. As Dixon returned up the passage, Margaret passed 
her swiftly. 


335 


North and South 

“It is all right ! ” said she, without looking at Dixon ; 
and before the woman could follow her with further ques- 
tions she had sped upstairs, and entered her bed-chamber, 
and bolted her door. 

She threw herself, dressed as she was, upon her bed. 
She was too much exhausted to think. Half-an-hour or 
more elapsed before the cramped nature of her position, and 
the chilliness, supervening upon great fatigue, had the 
power to rouse her numbed faculties. Then she began to 
recall, to combine, to wonder. The first idea that presented 
itself to her was, that all this sickening alarm on Frederick’s 
behalf was over; that the strain was past. The next was 
a wish to remember every word of the inspector’s which 
related to Mr. Thornton. When had he seen him ? What 
had he said ? What had Mr. Thornton done ? What were 
the exact words of his note ? And until she could recollect, 
even to the placing or omitting an article, the very expres- 
sions which he had used in the note, her mind refused to go 
on with its progress. But the next conviction she came to 
was clear enough; — Mr. Thornton had seen her close to 
Outwood station on the fatal Thursday night, and had been 
told of her denial that she was there. She stood as a liar 
in his eyes. She was a liar. But she had no thought of 
penitence before God; nothing but chaos and night sur- 
rounded the one lurid fact that, in Mr. Thornton’s eyes, 
she was degraded. She cared not to think, even to herself, 
of how much of excuse she might plead. That had nothing 
to do with Mr. Thornton ; she never dreamed that he, or 
any one else, could find cause for suspicion in what was so 
natural as her accompanying her brother; but what was 
really false and wrong was known to him, and he had a 
right to judge her. “ Oh, Frederick ! Frederick ! ” she cried, 
“ what have I not sacrificed for you ! ” Even when she fell 
asleep her thoughts were compelled to travel the same circle, 
only with exaggerated and monstrous circumstances of pain. 

When she awoke, a new idea flashed upon her with all 
the brightness of the morning. Mr. Thornton had learnt 

336 


Expiation 

her falsehood before he went to the coroner ; that suggested 
the thought that he had possibly been influenced so to do 
with a view of sparing her the repetition of her denial. But 
she pushed this notion on one side with the sick wilfulness 
of a child. If it were so, she felt no gratitude to him, as 
it only showed her how keenly he must have seen that she 
was disgraced already, .before he took such unwonted pains 
to spare her any further trial of truthfulness, which had 
already failed so signally. She would have gone through 
the whole — she would have perjured herself to save Frederick, 
rather — far rather — than Mr. Thornton should have had the 
knowledge that prompted him to interfere to save her. 
What ill-fate brought him in contact with the inspector? 
What made him be the very magistrate sent for to receive 
Leonards’ deposition? What had Leonards said? How 
much of it was intelligible to Mr. Thornton, who might 
already, for aught she knew, be aware of the old accusation 
against Frederick, through their mutual friend, Mr. Bell? 
If so, he had striven to save the son, who came in defiance 
of the law to attend his mother’s death-bed. And under 
this idea she could feel grateful — not yet, if ever she should, 
if his interference had been prompted by contempt. Oh ! 
had any one such just cause to feel contempt for her ? Mr. 
Thornton, above all people, on whom she had looked down 
from her imaginary heights till now ! She suddenly found 
herself at his feet, and was strangely distressed at her fall. 
She shrank from following out the premises to their con- 
clusion, and so acknowledging to herself how much she 
valued his respect and good opinion. Whenever this idea 
presented itself to her at the end of a long avenue of 
thoughts, she turned away from following that path — she 
would not believe in it. 

It was later than she fancied, for in the agitation of the 
previous night she had forgotten to wind up her watch ; 
and Mr. Hale had given especial orders that she was 
not to be disturbed by the usual awakening. By-and-by 
the door opened cautiously, and Dixon put her head in. 

337 z 


North and South 

Perceiving that Margaret was awake, she came forward 
with a letter. 

“ Here’s something to do you good, miss. A letter from 
Master Frederick.” 

“ Thank you, Dixon. How late it is ! ” 

She spoke very languidly, and suffered Dixon to lay it 
on the counterpane before her, without putting out a hand 
to take it. 

“ You want your breakfast, I’m sure. I will bring it 
you in a minute. Master has got the tray all ready, I 
know.” 

Margaret did not reply ; she let her go ; she felt that she 
must be alone before she could open that letter. She 
opened it at last. The first thing that caught her eye was 
the date two days earlier than she received it. He had, then, 
written when he had promised, and their alarm might have 
been spared. But she would read the letter and see. It 
was hasty enough, but perfectly satisfactory. He had seen 
Henry Lennox, who knew enough of the case to shake his 
head over it, in the first instance, and tell him he had done 
a very daring thing in returning to England, with such an 
accusation, backed by such powerful influence, hanging over 
him. But when they had come to talk it over, Mr. Lennox 
had acknowledged that there might be some chance of his 
acquittal, if he could but prove his statements by credible 
witnesses— that in such case it might be worth while to 
stand his trial, otherwise it would be a great risk. He 
would examine — he would take every pains. “ It struck 
me,” said Frederick, “that your introduction, little sister 
of mine, went a long way. Is it so? He made many 
inquiries, I can assure you. He seemed a sharp, intelligent 
fellow, and in good practice too, to judge from the signs of 
business and the number of clerks about him. But these 
may be only lawyer’s dodges. I have just caught a packet 
on the point of sailing — I am off in five minutes. I may 
have to come back to England again on this business ; so 
keep my visit secret. I shall send my father some rare old 

33 8 


Expiation 

sherry, such as yon cannot buy in England — (such stuff 
as I’ve got in the bottle before me) ! He needs something 
of the kind — my dear love to him — God bless him. I’m sure 
— here’s my cab. P.S. — What an escape that was ! Take 
care you don’t breathe of my having been — not even to the 
Shaws.” 

Margaret turned to 'the envelope: it was marked “Too 
late.” The letter had probably been trusted to some careless 
waiter, who had forgotten to post it. Oh! what slight 
cobwebs of chances stand between us and Temptation ! 
Frederick had been safe, and out of England twenty, nay, 
thirty hours ago; and it was only about seventeen hours 
since she had told a falsehood to baffle pursuit, which even 
then would have been vain. How faithless she had been ! 
Where now was her proud motto, “ Fais ce que dois, advienne 
que pourra ? ” If she had but dared to bravely tell the 
truth as regarded herself, defying them to find out what 
she refused to tell concerning another, how light of heart 
she would now have felt ! Not humbled before God, as 
having failed in trust towards Him ; not degraded and 
abased in Mr. Thornton’s sight. She caught herself up at 
this with a miserable tremor; here was she classing his 
low opinion of her alongside with the displeasure of God. 
How was it that he haunted her imagination so persistently ? 
What could it be ? Why did she care for what he thought 
in spite of all her pride ; in spite of herself ? She believed 
that she could have borne the sense of Almighty displeasure, 
because He knew all, and could read her penitence, and 
hear her cries for help in time to come. But Mr. Thornton 
— why did she tremble, and hide her face in the pillow? 
What strong feeling had overtaken her at last ? 

She sprang out of bed and prayed long and earnestly. 
It soothed and comforted her so to open her heart. But 
as soon as she reviewed her position she found the sting 
was still there; that she was not good enough, nor pure 
enough to be indifferent to the lowered opinion of a fellow- 
creature ; that the thought of how he must be looking upon 

339 


North and South 

her with contempt stood between her and her sense of 
wrong-doing. She took her letter in to her father as soon 
as she was dressed. There was so slight an allusion to 
their alarm at the railroad station, that Mr. Hale passed 
it over without paying any attention to it. Indeed, beyond 
the mere fact of Frederick having sailed undiscovered and 
unsuspected, he did not gather much from the letter at the 
time, he was so uneasy about Margaret’s pallid looks. She 
seemed continually on the point of weeping. 

“You are sadly overdone, Margaret. It is no wonder. 
But you must let me nurse you now.” 

He made her lie down on the sofa, and went for a shawl 
to cover her with. His tenderness released her tears ; and 
she cried bitterly. 

“ Poor child ! — poor child ! ” said he, looking fondly at 
her, as she lay with her face to the wall, shaking with her 
sobs. After a while they ceased, and she began to wonder 
whether she durst give herself the relief of telling her father 
of all her trouble. But there were more reasons against it 
than for it. The only one for it was the relief to herself ; 
and against it was the thought that it would add materially 
to her father’s nervousness, if it were indeed necessary for 
Frederick to come to England again ; that he would dwell 
on the circumstance of his son’s having caused the death 
of a man, however unwittingly and unwillingly; that this 
knowledge would perpetually recur to trouble him, in various 
shapes of exaggeration and distortion from the simple truth. 
And about her own great fault — he would be distressed 
beyond measure at her want of courage and faith, yet 
perpetually troubled to make excuses for her. Formerly 
Margaret would have come to him as priest as well as 
father, to tell him of her temptation and her sin ; but latterly 
they had not spoken much on such subjects ; and she knew 
not how, in his change of opinions, he would reply if the 
depth of her soul called unto his. No ; she would keep her 
secret, and bear the burden alone. Alone she would go 
before God, and cry for His absolution. Alone she would 

34o 


Expiation 

endure her disgraced position in the opinion of Mr. Thornton. 
She was unspeakably touched by the tender efforts of her 
father to think of cheerful subjects on which to talk, and 
so to take her thoughts away from dwelling on all that had 
happened of late. It was some months since he had been 
so talkative as he was this day. He would not let her sit 
up, and offended Dixon desperately by insisting on waiting 
upon her himself. 

At last she smiled ; a poor, weak little smile ; but it gave 
him the truest pleasure. 

“ It seems strange to think, that what gives us most hope 
for the future should be called Dolores,” said Margaret. The 
remark was more in character with her father than with 
her usual self ; but to-day they seemed to have changed 
natures. 

“ Her mother was a Spaniard, I believe ; that accounts for 
her religion. Her father was a stiff Presbyterian when I knew 
him. But it is a very soft and pretty name.” 

“ How young she is ! — younger by fourteen months than 
I am. Just the age that Edith was when she was engaged 
to Captain Lennox. Papa, we will go and see them in 
Spain.” 

He shook his head. But he said, “ If you wish it, Mar- 
garet. Only let us come back here. It would seem unfair 
— unkind to your mother, who always, I’m afraid, disliked 
Milton so much, if we left it now she is lying here, and cannot 
go with us. No, dear ; you shall go and see them, and bring 
me back a report of my Spanish daughter.” 

“ No, papa, I won’t go without you. Who is to take care 
of you when I am gone ? ” 

“ I should like to know which of us is taking care of the 
other. But if you went, I should persuade Mr. Thornton to 
let me give him double lessons. We would work up the 
classics famously. That would be a perpetual interest. You 
might go on, and see Edith at Corfu, if you liked.” 

Margaret did not speak all at once. Then she said rather 
gravely — “ Thank you, papa. But I don’t want to go. We 

34i 


/ North and South 

will hope that Mr. Lennox will manage so well, that Frederick 
may bring Dolores to see ns when they are married. And as 
for Edith, the regiment won’t remain much longer in Corfu. 
Perhaps we shall see both of them here before another year 
is out.” 

Mr. Hale’s cheerful subjects had come to an end. Some 
painful recollection had stolen across his mind, and driven 
him into silence. By-and-by Margaret said — 

“ Papa — did you see Nicholas Higgins at the funeral ? 
He was there, and Mary too.' Poor fellow, it was his way of 
showing sympathy. He has a good warm heart under his 
bluff abrupt ways.” 

“ I am sure of it,” replied Mr. Hale. “ I saw it all along, 
even while you tried to persuade me that he was all sorts of 
bad things. We will go and see them to-morrow, if you are 
strong enough to walk so far.” 

“ Oh yes. I want to see them. We did not pay Mary — 
or rather she refused to take it, Dixon says. We will go so 
as to catch him just after his dinner, and before he goes to 
his work.” 

Towards evening Mr. Hale said — 

“ I half expected Mr. Thornton would have called. He 
spoke of a book yesterday which he had, and which I wanted 
to see. He said he would try and bring it to day.” 

Margaret sighed. She knew he would not come. He 
would be too delicate to run the chance of meeting her, while 
her shame must be so fresh in his memory. The very 
mention of his name renewed her trouble, and produced a 
relapse into the feeling of depressed, preoccupied exhaustion. 
She gave way to listless languor. Suddenly it struck her 
that this was a strange manner to show her patience, or to 
reward her father for his watchful care of her all through the 
day. She sate up, and offered to read aloud. His eyes were 
failing, and he gladly accepted her proposal. She read well : 
she gave the due emphasis ; but had any one asked her, when 
she had ended, the meaning of what she had been reading, 
she could not have told. She was smitten with a feeling of 

34 2 


Expiation 

ingratitude to Mr. Thornton, inasmuch as, in the morning, 
she had refused to accept the kindness he had shown her in 
making further inquiry from the medical men, so as to 
obviate any inquest being held. Oh ! she was grateful ! She 
had been cowardly and false, and had shown her cowardliness 
and falsehood in action that could not be recalled ; but she 
was not ungrateful. It sent a glow to her heart, to know 
how she could feel towards one who had reason to despise 
her. His cause for contempt was so just, that she should 
have respected him less if she had thought he did not feel 
contempt. It was a pleasure to feel how thoroughly she 
respected him. He could not prevent her doing that ; it was 
the one comfort in all this misery. 

Late in the evening, the expected book arrived, “ with 
Mr. Thornton’s kind regards, and wishes to know how Mr. 
Hale is.” 

“ Say that I am much better, Dixon, but that Miss 
Hale ” 

“No, papa,” said Margaret eagerly — “ don’t say anything 
about me. He does not ask.” 

“ My dear child, how you are shivering ! ” said her father 
a few minutes afterwards. “ You must go to bed directly. 
You have turned quite pale ! ” 

Margaret did not refuse to go, though she was loth to 
leave her father alone. She needed the relief of solitude after 
a day of busy thinking, and busier repenting. 

But she seemed much as usual the next day ; the linger- 
ing gravity and sadness, and the occasional absence of mind, 
were not unnatural symptoms in the early days of grief. And 
almost in proportion to her re-establishment in health was 
her father’s relapse into his abstracted musings upon the wife 
he had lost, and the past era in his life that was closed to him 
for ever. 


343 


North and South 


\ 


CHAPTER XXXYI 

UNION NOT ALWAYS STRENGTH 

“ The steps of the bearers, heavy and slow, 

The sobs of the mourners, deep and low.” 

Shelley. 

At the time arranged the previous day, they set out on their 
walk to see Nicholas Higgins and his daughter. They both 
were reminded of their recent loss by a strange kind of shy- 
ness in their new habiliments, and in the fact that it was 
the first time, for many weeks, that they had deliberately 
gone out together . 1 They drew very close to each other in 
unspoken sympathy. 

Nicholas was sitting by the fireside in his accustomed 
corner, but he had not his accustomed pipe. He was lean- 
ing his head upon his hand, his arm resting on his knee. He 
did not get up when he saw them, though Margaret could 
read the welcome in his eye. 

“ Sit ye down, sit ye down. Fire’s welly out,” said he, 
giving it a vigorous poke, as if to turn attention away from 
himself. He was rather disorderly, to be sure, with a black 
unshaven beard of several days’ growth, making his pale face 
look yet paler, and a jacket which would have been all the 
better for patching. 

“We thought we should have a good chance of finding 
you, just after dinner-time," said Margaret. 

“We have had our sorrow too, since we saw you,” said 
Mr. Hale. 

“ Ay, ay. Sorrows is more plentiful than dinners just 
now ; I reckon my dinner hour stretches all o’er the day ; 
yo’re pretty sure of finding me.” 

“ Are you out of work ? ” asked Margaret. 

“ Ay,” he replied shortly. Then, after a moment’s silence, 
he added, looking up for the first time : “ I’m not wanting 
brass. Dunno yo’ think it. Bess, poor lass, had a little 

344 


Union not always Strength 

stock under her pillow, ready to slip into my hand, last 
moment, and Mary is fustian-cutting. But I’m out of work 
a’ the same.” 

“ We owe Mary some money,” said Mr. Hale, before 
Margaret’s sharp pressure on his arm could arrest the words. 

“ If hoo takes it, I’ll turn her out o’ doors. I’ll bide 
inside these four walls, and she’ll bide out. That’s a’.” 

“But we owe her many thanks for her kind service,” 
began Mr. Hale again. 

“I ne’er thanked your daughter theer for her deeds o’ 
love to my poor wench. I ne’er could find th’ words. I’se 
have to begin and try now, if yo’ start making an ado about 
what little Mary could sarve yo’.” 

“Is it because of the strike you’re out of work ? ” asked 
Margaret gently. 

“ Strike’s ended. It’s o’er for this time. I’m out o’ 
work because I ne’er asked for it. And I ne’er asked for it, 
because good words is scarce, and bad words is plentiful.” 

He was in a mood to take a surly pleasure in giving 
answers that were like riddles. But Margaret saw that he 
would like to be asked for the explanation. 

“ And good words are ” 

“ Asking for work. I reckon them’s almost the best 
words that men can say. * Gi’ me work ’ means ‘ and I’ll do 
it like a man.’ Them’s good words.” 

“And bad words are refusing you work when you ask 
for it.” 

“ Ay. Bad words is saying ‘ Aha, my fine chap ! Yo’ve 
been true to yo’r order, and I’ll be true to mine. Yo’ did 
the best yo’ could for them as wanted help ; that’s yo’r way 
of being true to yo’r kind ; and I’ll be true to mine. Yo’ve 
been a poor fool, as knowed no better nor be a true faithful 
fool. So go and be d — d to yo’. There’s no work for yo’ 
here.’ Them’s bad words. I’m not a fool ; and, if I was, 
folk ought to ha’ taught me how to be wise after their 
fashion. I could m’appen ha’ learnt, if any one had tried to 
teach me.” 


345 


North and South 

“ Would it not be worth while,” said Mr. Hale, “ to ask 
your old master if he would take you back again ? It might 
be a poor chance, but it would be a chance.” 

He looked up again, with a sharp glance at the questioner ; 
and then tittered a low and bitter laugh. 

“ Measter ! if it’s no offence, I’ll ask yo’ a question or 
two in my turn.” 

“ You’re quite welcome,” said Mr. Hale. 

“ I reckon yo’n some way of earning your bread. Folk 
seldom lives i’ Milton just for pleasure, if they can live any- 
where else.” 

“ You are quite right. I have some independent property, 
but my intention in settling in Milton was to become a 
private tutor.” 

“ To teach folk. Well ! I reckon they pay yo’ for teach- 
ing them, dunnot they ? ” 

“ Yes,” replied Mr. Hale, smiling. “ I teach in order to 
get paid.” 

“ And them that pays yo’, dun they tell yo’ whatten to 
do, or whatten not to do wi’ the money they gives you in 
just payment for your pains — in fair exchange like ? ” 

“ No ; to be sure not ! ” 

“ They dunnot say, ‘ Yo’ may have a brother, or a friend 
as dear as a brother, who wants this here brass for a purpose 
both yo’ and he think right ; but yo’ mun promise not give it 
to him. Yo’ may see a good use, as yo’ think, to put yo’r 
money to ; but we don’t think it good, and so if yo’ spend it 
a-thatens we’ll just leave off dealing with yo’.’ They dunnot 
say that, dun they ? ” 

“ No : to be sure not ! ” 

“ Would yo’ stand it if they did ? ” 

“ It would be some very hard pressure that would make 
me even think of submitting to such dictation.” 

“ There’s not the pressure on all the broad earth that 
would make me,” said Nicholas Higgins. “ Now yo’ve got 
it. Yo’ve hit the bull’s eye. Hamper’s — that’s where I 
worked — makes their men pledge ’emselves they’ll not give 

346 


Union not always Strength 

a penny to help th’ Union or keep turn-outs fro’ clemming. 
They may pledge and make pledge,” continued he scorn- 
fully ; “ they nobbut make liars and hypocrites. And that’s 
a less sin, to my mind, to making men’s hearts so hard that 
they’ll not do a kindness to them as needs it, or help on the 
right and just cause, though it goes again’ the strong hand. 
But I’ll ne’er forswear mysel’, for a’ the work the king could 
gi’e me. I’m a member o’ the Union ; and I think it’s the 
only thing to do the workman any good. And I’ve been a 
turn-out, and known what it were to clem ; so, if I get a 
shilling, sixpence shall go to them if they ax it from me. 
Consequence is, I dunnot see where I’m to get a shilling.” 

“ Is that rule about not contributing to the Union in 
force at all the mills ? ” asked Margaret. 

“ I cannot say. It’s a new regulation at ourn ; and I 
reckon they’ll find that they cannot stick to it. But it’s in 
force now. By-and-by they’ll find out, tyrants makes liars.” 

There was a little pause. Margaret was hesitating 
whether she should say what was in her mind ; she was 
unwilling to irritate one who was already gloomy and de- 
spondent enough. At last out it came. But in her soft 
tones, and with her reluctant manner, showing that she was 
unwilling to say anything unpleasant ; it did not seem to 
annoy Higgins, only to perplex him. 

“ Do you remember poor Boucher saying that the Union 
was a tyrant ? I think he said it was the worst tyrant of 
all. And I remember, at the time I agreed with him.” 

It was a long while before he spoke. He was resting 
his head on his two hands, and looking down into the fire ; 
so she could not read the expression on his face. 

“I’ll not deny but what th’ Union finds it necessary to 
force a man into his own good. I’ll speak truth. A man 
leads a dree life who’s not i’ th’ Union. But, once i’ th’ 
Union, his interests are taken care on better nor he could 
do it for himseF, or by himsel’, for that matter. It’s the 
only way working men can get their rights, by all joining 
together. More the members, more chance for each one 

347 


North and South 

/ 

separate man having justice done him. Government takes 
care o’ fools and madmen ; and, if any man is inclined to 
do himsel’ or his neighbour a hurt, it puts a bit of a check 
on him, whether he likes it or no. That’s all we do i’ 
th’ Union. We can’t clap folk into prison ; but we can 
make a man’s life so heavy to be borne, that he’s obliged 
to come in, and be wise and helpful in spite of himself. 
Boucher were a fool all along, and ne’er a worse fool than 
at th’ last.” 

“ He did you harm ? ” asked Margaret. 

“ Aye, that did he. We had public opinion on our side, 
till he and his sort began rioting and breaking laws. It 
were all o’er wi’ the strike then.” 

“ Then would it not have been far better to have left him 
alone, and not forced him to join the Union? He did 
you no good ; and you drove him mad.” 

“ Margaret,” said her father, in a low and warning tone, 
for he saw the cloud gathering on Higgins’s face. 

“ I like her,” said Higgins suddenly. “ Hoo speaks plain 
out what’s in her mind. Hoo doesn’t comprehend th’ Union 
for all that. It’s a great power: it’s our only power. I 
ha’ read a bit o’ poetry about a plough going o’er a daisy, 
as made tears come into my eyes, afore I’d other cause for 
crying. But the chap ne’er stopped driving the plough, I’se 
warrant, for all he were pitiful about the daisy. He’d too 
much mother- wit for that. Th’ Union’s the plough, making 
ready the land for harvest-time. Such as Boucher — ’twould 
be settin’ him up too much to liken him to a daisy; he’s 
liker a weed lounging over the ground — mun just make 
up their mind to be put out o’ the way. I’m sore vexed 
wi’ him just now. So, m’appen I dunnot speak him fair. 
I could go o’er him wi’ a plough mysel’, wi’ a’ the pleasure 
in life.” 

“ Why ? What has he been doing ? Anything fresh ? ” 

“ Ay, to be sure. He’s ne’er out o’ mischief, that man. 
First of a’ he must go raging like a mad fool, and kick up 
yon riot. Then he’d to go into hiding, where he’d a been 

348 


Union not always Strength 

yet, if Thornton had followed him out as I’d hoped he 
would ha’ done. But Thornton, haying got his own pur- 
pose, didn’t care to go on wi’ the prosecution for the riot. 
So Boucher slunk back again to his house. He ne’er 
showed himsel’ abroad for a day or two. He had that 
grace. And then, where think ye that he went ? Why, to 
Hamper’s. Damn him ! He went wi’ his mealy-mouthed 
face, that turns me sick to look at, a-asking for work, though 
he knowed well enough the new rule, o’ pledging themselves 
to give nought to th’ Unions ; nought to help the starving 
turn-out ! Why, he’d a clemmed to death, if th’ Union had 
na helped him in his pinch. There he went, ossing to 
promise aught, and pledge himsel’ to aught — to tell a’ he 
knowed on our proceedings, the good-for-nothing Judas. But 
I’ll say this for Hamper, and thank him for it at my dying 
day, he drove Boucher away, and would na listen to him — 
ne’er a word — though folk standing by, says the traitor cried 
like a babby ! ” 

“ Oh ! how shocking ! how pitiful ! ” exclaimed Margaret. 
“ Higgins, I don’t know you to-day. Don’t you see how 
you’ve made Boucher what he is, by driving him into the 
Union against his will — without his heart going with it. 
You have made him what he is ! ” 

“ Made him what he is ! What was he ? ” 

Gathering, gathering along the narrow street, came a 
hollow, measured sound; now forcing itself on their atten- 
tion. Many voices were hushed and low : many steps were 
heard, not moving onwards, at least not with any rapidity 
or steadiness of motion, but as if circling round one spot. 
Yes, there was one distinct, slow tramp of feet, which made 
itself a clear path through the air, and reached their ears ; 
the measured; laboured walk of men carrying a heavy burden. 
They were all drawn towards the house-door by some irre- 
sistible impulse ; impelled thither — not by a poor curiosity, 
but as if by some solemn blast. 

Six men walked in the middle of the road, three of them 
being policemen. They carried a door, taken off its hinges, 

349 


North and South 

/ 

upon their shoulders, on which lay some dead human creature ; 
and from each side of the door there were constant droppings. 
All the street turned out to see and, seeing, to accompany the 
procession, each one questioning the bearers, who answered 
almost reluctantly at last, so often had they told the 
tale.” 

“We found him i’ th’ brook in the field beyond there.” 

“ Th’ brook ! — why, there’s not water enough to drown 
him ! ” 

“He was a determined chap. He lay with his face 
downwards. He was sick enough o’ living, choose what 
cause he had for it.” 

Higgins crept up to Margaret’s side, and said in a weak 
piping kind of voice— “ It’s not John Boucher ? He had na 
spunk enough. Sure! It’s not John Boucher! Why, they 
are a’ looking this way ! Listen ! I’ve a singing in my head, 
and I cannot hear.” 

They put the door down carefully upon the stones, and 
all might see the poor drowned wretch — his glassy eyes, one 
half-open, staring right upwards to the sky. Owing to the 
position in which he had been found lying, his face was 
swollen and discoloured; besides, his skin was stained by 
the water in the brook, which had been used for dyeing 
purposes. The fore part of his head was bald ; but the hair 
grew thin and long behind, and every separate lock was a 
conduit for water. Through all these disfigurements, Mar- 
garet recognised John Boucher. It seemed to her so 
sacrilegious to be peering into that poor, distorted, agonised 
face that, by a flash of instinct, she went forwards and 
softly covered the dead man’s countenance with her hand- 
kerchief. The eyes that saw her do this followed her, as 
she turned away from her pious office, and were thus led to 
the place where Nicholas Higgins stood, like one rooted to 
the spot. The men spoke together, and then one of them 
came up to Higgins, who would have fain shrunk back into 
his house. 

“ Higgins, thou knowed him ! Thou mun go tell the 
35o 


Union not always Strength 

wife. Do it gently, man, but do it quick, for we canna leave 
him here long.” 

“ I canna go,” said Higgins. “ Dunnot ask me. I canna 
face her.” 

“ Thou knows her best,” said the man. “ We’n done a 
deal in bringing him here — thou take thy share.” 

“ I canna do it,” said Higgins. “ I’m welly felled wi’ 
seeing him. We wasn’t friends ; and now he’s dead.” 

“Well, if thou wunnot, thou wunnot. Some one mun 
though. It’s a dree task ; but it’s a chance, every minute, 
as she doesn’t hear on it in some rougher way nor a person 
going to make her let on by degrees, as it were.” 

“ Papa, do you go,” said Margaret in a low voice. 

“If I could — if I had time to think of what I had better 

say ; but all at once ” Margaret saw that her father 

was indeed unable. He was trembling from head to foot. 

“ I will go,” said she. 

“ Bless yo’, miss, it will be a kind act ; for she’s been but 
a sickly sort of body, I hear, and few hereabouts know much 
on her.” 

Margaret knocked at the closed door ; but there was such 
a noise, as of many little ill-ordered children, that she could 
hear no reply ; indeed, she doubted if she was heard ; and, as 
every moment of delay made her recoil from her task more 
and more, she opened the door and went in, shutting it after 
her, and even, unseen to the woman, fastening the bolt. 

Mrs. Boucher was sitting in a rocking-chair, on the other 
side of the ill-redd-up fireplace; it looked as if the house 
had been untouched for days by any effort at cleanliness. 

Margaret said something, she hardly knew what, her 
throat and mouth were so dry, and the children’s noise 
completely prevented her from being heard. She tried 
again. 

“ How are you, Mrs. Boucher ? But very poorly, I’m 
afraid.” 

“ I’ve no chance o’ being well,” said she querulously. 
“ I’m left alone to manage these childer, and nought for to 

35i 


North and South 

give ’em for to keep ’em quiet. John should na ha’ left me, 
and me so poorly.” 

“ How long is it since he went away ? ” 

“Four days sin’. No one would give him work here, 
and he’d to go on tramp toward Greenfield. But he might 
ha’ been back afore this, or sent me some word if he’d getten 
work. He might ” 

“ Oh, don’t blame him,” said Margaret. “ He felt it 
deeply, I’m sure ” 

“ Willto’ hold thy din, and let me hear the lady speak ! ” 
addressing herself, in no very gentle voice, to a little urchin 
of about a year old. She apologetically continued to 
Margaret, “ He’s always mithering me for ‘ daddy ’ and 
‘ butty ’ ; and I ha’ no butties to give him, and daddy’s 
away, and forgotten us a’, I think. He’s his father’s darling, 
he is,” said she with a sudden turn of mood, and, dragging 
the child up to her knee, she began kissing it fondly. 

Margaret laid her hand on the woman’s arm to arrest 
her attention. Their eyes met. 

“ Poor little fellow ! ” said Margaret slowly ; “he was his 
father’s darling.” 

“ He is his father’s darling,” said the woman, rising 
hastily, and standing face to face with Margaret. Neither 
of them spoke for a moment or two. Then Mrs. Boucher 
began in a low, growling tone, gathering in wildness as she 
went on : “ He is his father’s darling, I say. Poor folk can 
love their childer as well as rich. Why dunno yo’ speak ? 
Why dun yo’ stare at me wi’ your great pitiful eyes? 
Where’s John ? ” Weak as she was, she shook Margaret 
to force out an answer. “ Oh, my God ! ” said she, under- 
standing the meaning of that tearful look. She sank back 
into the chair. Margaret took up the child and put him 
into her arms. 

“ He loved him,” said she. 

“ Ay,” said the woman, shaking her head, “ he loved 
us a’. We had some one to love us once. It’s a long time 
ago ; but when he were in life and with us he did love us, 

35 2 


Union not always Strength 

he did. He loved this babby m’appen the best on us ; but 
be loved me and I loved him, though I was calling him five 
minutes agone. Are yo’ sure he’s dead ? ” said she, trying 
to get up. “If it’s only that he’s ill and like to die, they 
may bring him round yet. I’m but an ailing creature mysel’ 
— I’ve been ailing this long time.” 

“ But he is dead — he is drowned ! ” 

“ Folk are brought round after they’re dead -drowned. 
Whatten was I thinking of, to sit still when I should be 
stirring mysel’ ? Here, wbisth thee, child — wbistb thee ! 
tak’ this, tak’ aught to play wi’, but dunnot cry while my 
heart’s breaking ! Oh, where is my strength gone to ? O 
John — husband ! ” 

Margaret saved her from falling by catching her in her 
arms. She sate down in the rocking-chair, and held the 
woman upon her knees, her head lying on Margaret’s 
shoulder. The other children, clustered together in affright, 
began to understand the mystery of the scene ; but the 
ideas came slowly, for their brains were dull and languid 
of ; • i eeption. They set up such a cry of despair, as they 
guessed the truth, that Margaret knew not how to bear it. 
Johnny's cry was loudest of them all, though he knew not 
why he r»ried, poor little fellow. 

The mother quivered as she lay in Margaret’s arms. 
Margaret heard a noise at the door. 

“ Open it. Open it quick,” said she to the eldest child. 
“ It’s bolted; make no noise — be very still. Oh, papa, let 
them go upstairs very softly and carefully, and perhaps she 
will not hear them. She has fainted — that’s all.” 

“It’s as well for her, poor creature,” said a woman 
following in the wake of the bearers of the dead. “ But 
yo’re not fit to hold her. Stay, I’ll run fetch a pillow, and 
we’ll let her down easy on the floor.” 

This helpful neighbour was a great relief to Margaret ; 
she was evidently a stranger to the house, a new-comer in 
the district, indeed ; but she was so kind and thoughtful that 
Margaret felt she was no longer needed ; and that it would 

353 2 a 


I 


North and South 

be better, perhaps, to set an example of clearing the house, 
which was filled with idle, if sympathising, gazers. 

She looked round for Nicholas Higgins. He was not 
there. So she spoke to the woman who had taken the lead 
in placing Mrs. Boucher on the floor. 

“ Can you give all these people a hint that they had 
better leave in quietness ? So that, when she comes round, 
she could only find one or two that she knows about her. 
Papa, will you speak to the men, and get them to go away ? 
She cannot breathe, poor thing, with this crowd about 
her.” 

Margaret was kneeling down by Mrs. Boucher and 
bathing her face with vinegar ; but in a few minutes she 
was surprised at the gush of fresh air. She looked round, 
and saw a smile pass between her father and the woman. 

“ What is it ? ” asked she. 

“ Only our good friend here,” replied her father, “ hit on a 
capital expedient for clearing the place.” 

“ I bid ’em be gone, and each take a child with 'em, and 
to mind that they were orphans, and their mother a widow. 
It was who could do most, and the childer are sure of a 
bellyful to-day, and of kindness too. Does hoo know how 
he died ? ” 

“No,” said Margaret ; “I could not tell her all at 
once.” 

“ Hoo mun be told because of th’ inquest. See ! Hoo’s 
coming round ; shall you or I do it ? or m’appen your father 
would be best ? ” 

“ No; you, you,” said Margaret. 

They awaited her perfect recovery in silence. Then the 
neighbour woman sat down on the floor, and took Mrs. 
Boucher’s head and shoulders on her lap. 

“ Neighbour,” said she, “ your man is dead. Guess yo’ 
how he died ? ” 

“ He were drowned,” said Mrs. Boucher feebly, begin- 
ning to cry for the first time, at this rough probing of her 
sorrows. 


354 


Union not always Strength 

“ He were found drowned. He were coming home very- 
hopeless o’ aught on earth. He thought God could na be 
harder than men ; m’appen not so hard ; m’appen as tender 
as a mother ; m’appen tenderer. I’m not saying he did 
right, and I’m not saying he did wrong. All I say is, may 
neither me nor mine ever have his sore heart, or we may 
do like things.” 

“ He has left me alone wi’ a’ these children ! ” moaned 
the widow, less distressed at the manner of the death than 
Margaret expected ; but it was of a piece with her helpless 
character to feel his loss as principally affecting herself and 
her children. 

“Not alone,” said Mr. Hale solemnly. “ Who is with 
you ? Who will take up your cause ? ” The widow opened 
her eyes wide, and looked at the new speaker, of whose 
presence she had not been aware till then. 

“ Who has promised to be a father to the fatherless ? ” 
continued he. 

“ But I’ve getten six children, sir, and the eldest not 
eight years of age. I’m not meaning for to doubt His 
power, sir — only it needs a deal o’ trust ; ” and she began 
to cry afresh. 

“ Hoo’ll be better able to talk to-morrow, sir,” said the 
neighbour. “ Best comfort now would be the feel of a child 
at her heart. I’m sorry they took the babby.” 

“I’ll go for it,” said Margaret. And in a few minutes 
she returned, carrying Johnnie, his face all smeared with 
eating, and his hands loaded with treasures in the shape of 
shells, and bits of crystal, and the head of a plaster figure. 
She placed him in his mother’s arms. 

“ There ! ” said the woman, “ now you go. They’ll cry 
together, and comfort together, better nor any one but a child 
can do. I’ll stop with her as long as I’m needed, and if yo’ 
come to-morrow, yo’ can have a deal o’ wise talk with her, 
that she’s not up to to-day.” 

As Margaret and her father went slowly up the street, 
she paused at Higgins’s closed door. 

355 


I 


North and South 

“ Shall we go in ? ” asked her father. “ I was thinking of 
him too.” 

They knocked. There was no answer, so they tried the 
door. It was bolted, but they thought they heard him 
moving within. 

“ Nicholas ! ” said Margaret. There was no answer, and 
they might have gone away, believing the house to be empty, 
if there had not been some accidental fall, as of a book, 
within . 1 

“ Nicholas ! ” said Margaret again. “ It is only us. 
Won’t you let us come in ? ” 

“No,” said he. “I spoke as plain as I could, Hbout using 
words, when I bolted th’ door. Let me be, this day.” 

Mr. Hale would have urged their desire, but Margaret 
placed her finger on his lips. 

“ I don’t wonder at it,” said she. “ I myself long to be 
alone. It seems the only thing to do one good after a day 
like this.” 


CHAPTEK XXXYII 

LOOKING SOUTH 



“ A spade ! a rake ! a hoe ! 

A pickaxe or a bill 1 
A hook to reap, or a scythe to mow, 

A flail, or what ye will — 

And here’s a ready hand 
To ply the needful tool, 

And skill’d enough, by lessons rough, 

In Labour’s rugged school.” 

Hood. 

Higgins’s door was locked the next day, when they went to 
pay their call on the widow Boucher ; but they learnt this 
time from an officious neighbour, that he was really from 
home. He had, however, been in to see Mrs. Boucher;, 

356 


Looking South 

before starting on his day’s business, whatever that was. It 
was but an unsatisfactory visit to Mrs. Boucher ; she con- 
sidered herself as an ill-used woman by her poor husband’s 
suicide ; and there was quite germ of truth enough in this idea 
to make it a very difficult one to refute. Still, it was unsatis- 
factory to see how completely her thoughts were turned upon 
herself and her own position ; and this selfishness extended 
even to her relations with her children, whom she con- 
sidered as incumbrances, even in the very midst of her 
somewhat animal affection for them. Margaret tried to 
make acquaintances with one or two of them, while her 
father strove to raise the widow’s thoughts into some 
higher channel than that of mere helpless querulousness. 
She found that the children were truer and simpler mourners 
thar the widow. Daddy had been a kind daddy to them ; 
each could tell, in their eager stammering way, of some 
tenderness shown, some indulgence granted by the lost 
father. 

“Is yon thing upstairs really him? it doesna look like 
him. I’m feared on it, and I never was feared o’ daddy.” 

Margaret’s heart bled to hear that the mother, in her 
selfish requirement of sympathy, had taken her children 
'stairs to see their disfigured father. It was intermingling 
the coarseness of horror with the profoundness of natural 
grief. She tried to turn their thoughts in some other 
direction ; on what they could do for mother ; on what — 
for this was a more efficacious way of putting it — what 
father would have wished them to do. Margaret was more 
successful than Mr. Hale in her efforts. The children, seeing 
their little duties lie in action close around them, began 
to try each one to do something that she suggested towards 
redding up the slatternly room. But her father set too 
high a standard, and too abstract a view, before the indolent 
invalid. She could not rouse her torpid mind into any vivid 
imagination of what her husband’s misery might have been, 
before he had resorted to the last terrible step ; she could only 
look upon it as it affected herself ; she could not enter into the 

357 


I 


North and South 

enduring mercy of the God who had not specially interposed 
to prevent the water from drowning her prostrate husband ; 
and, although she was secretly blaming her husband for 
having fallen into such drear despair, and denying that he 
had any excuse for his last rash act, she was inveterate in 
her abuse of all who could by any possibility be supposed to 
have driven him to such desperation. The masters — Mr. 
Thornton in particular, whose mill had been attacked by 
Boucher, and who, after the warrant had been issued for his 
apprehension on the charge of rioting, had caused it to be 
withdrawn — the Union, of which Higgins was the repre- 
sentative to the poor woman — the children, so numerous, 
so hungry, and so noisy — all made up one great army of 
personal enemies, whose fault it was that she was now 
a helpless widow. 

Margaret heard enough of this unreasonableness to dis- 
hearten her ; and when they came away she found it 
impossible to cheer her father. 

“ It is the town life,” said she. “ Their nerves are 
quickened by the haste and bustle and speed of everything 
around them, to say nothing of the confinement in these 
pent-up houses, which of itself is enough to induce depres- 
sion and worry of spirits. Now, in the country, people live 
so much more out of doors, even children, and even in the 
winter.” 

“But people must live in towns. And in the country 
some get such stagnant habits of mind that they are almost 
fatalists.” 

“ Yes ; I acknowledge that. I suppose each mode of life 
produces its own trials and its own temptations. The dweller 
in towns must find it as difficult to be patient and calm, as 
the country-bred man must find it to be active, and equal to 
unwonted emergencies. Both must find it hard to realise a 
future of any kind : the one because the present is so living 
and hurrying and close around him ; the other because his 
life tempts him to revel in the mere sense of animal exist- 
ence, not knowing of, and consequently not caring for, any 

358 


Looking South 

pungency of pleasure, for the attainment of which he can 
plan, and deny himself, and look forward.” 

“ And thus both the necessity for engrossment and the 
stupid content in the present produce the same effects. But 
this poor Mrs. Boucher ! how little we can do for her.” 

“And yet we dare not leave her without our efforts, 
although they may seem so useless. Oh papa ! it's a hard 
world to live in ! ” 

“ So it is, my child. We feel it so just now, at any rate ; 
but we have been very happy, even in the midst of our 
sorrow. What a pleasure Frederick’s visit was ! " 

“ Yes, that it was,*’ said Margaret brightly. “ It was such 
a charming, snatched, forbidden thing.” 

But she suddenly stopped speaking. She had spoiled the 
remembrance of Frederick’s visit to herself by her own 
cowardice. Of all faults, the one she most despised in others 
was the want of bravery ; the meanness of heart which leads 
to untruth. And here had she been guilty of it ! Then came 
the thought of Mr. Thornton’s cognisance of her falsehood. 
She wondered if she should have minded detection half so 
much from any one else. She tried herself in imagination 
with her Aunt Shaw and Edith ; with her father ; with 
Captain and Mr. Lennox ; with Frederick. The thought of 
the last knowing what she had done, even in his own 
behalf, was the most painful, for the brother and sister were 
in the first flush of their mutual regard and love ; but even 
any fall in Frederick’s opinion was as nothing to the shame, 
the shrinking shame she felt at the thought of meeting Mr. 
Thornton again. And yet she longed to see him ; to get it 
over ; to understand where she stood in his opinion. Her 
cheeks burnt as she recollected how proudly she had implied 
an objection to trade (in the early days of their acquaintance), 
because it too often led to the deceit of passing off inferior for 
superior goods, in one branch ; of assuming credit for wealth 
and resources not possessed, in the other. She remembered 
Mr. Thornton’s look of calm disdain, as in few words he gave 
her to understand that, in the great scheme of commerce, all 

359 


North and South 

dishonourable ways of acting were sure to prove injurious in 
the long run, and that, testing such actions simply according 
to the poor standard of success, there was folly and not 
wisdom in all such, and in every kind of deceit in trade, as 
well as in other things. She remembered — she, then strong 
in her own untempted truth — asking him, if he did not think 
that buying in the cheapest and selling in the dearest market 
proved some want of the transparent justice which is so 
intimately connected with the idea of truth ; and she had used 
the word chivalric — and her father had corrected her with 
the higher word, Christian, and so drawn the argument upon 
himself, while she sate silent by with a slight feeling of 
contempt. 

No more contempt for her! — no more talk about the 
chivalric ! Henceforward she must feel humiliated and dis- 
graced in his sight. But when should she see him ? Her 
heart leaped up in apprehension at every ring of the door-bell ; 
and yet, when it fell down to calmness, she felt strangely 
saddened and sick at heart at each disappointment. It was 
very evident that her father expected to see him, and was 
surprised that he did not come. The truth was, that there 
were points in their conversation the other night on which 
they had no time then to enlarge ; but it had been under- 
stood that if possible on the succeeding evening — if not hen, 
at least the very first evening that Mr. Thornton could 
command — they should meet for further discussion. Mr. 
Hale had looked forward to this meeting ever since they had 
parted. He had not yet resumed the instruction to his pupils, 
which he had relinquished at the commencement of his wife’s 
more serious illness, so he had fewer occupations than usual ; 
and the great interest of the last day or so (Boucher’s suicide) 
l'aad driven him back with more eagerness than ever upon his 
speculations. He was restless all the evening. He kept 
saying, “ I quite expected to have seen Mr. Thornton. I 
think the messenger who brought the book last night must 
have had some note, and forgot to deliver it. Do you think 
there has been any message left to-day ? ” 

360 


Looking South 

“ I will go and inquire, papa,” said Margaret, after the 
changes on these sentences had been rung once or twice. 
“ Stay, there’s a ring ! ” She sat down instantly, and bent 
her head attentively over her work. She heard a step on 
the stairs, but it was only one, and she knew it was 
Dixon’s. She lifted up her head and sighed, and believed she 
felt glad. 

“ It’s that Higgins, sir. He wants to see you, or else 
Miss Hale. Or it might be Miss Hale first, and then you, 
sir ; for he’s in a strange kind of way.” 

“ He had better come up here, Dixon ; and then he can 
see us both, and choose which he likes for his listener.” 

“ Oh ! very well, sir. I’ve no wish to hear what he’s got 
to say, I’m sure ; only, if you could see his shoes, I’m sure 
you’d say the kitchen was the fitter place.” 

“ He can wipe them, I suppose,” said Mr. Hale. So 
Dixon flung off, to bid him walk upstairs. She was a 
little mollified, however, when he looked at his feet with a 
hesitating air ; and then, sitting down on the bottom stair, 
he took off the offending shoes, and without a word walked 
upstairs. 

“ Sarvant, sir ! ” said he, slicking his hair down when he 
came into the room : “If hoo’ll excuse me (looking at 
Margaret) for being i’ my stockings ; I’se been tramping a’ 
day, and streets is none o’ th’ cleanest.” 

Margaret thought that fatigue might account for the 
change in his manner, for he was unusually quiet and sub- 
dued ; and he had evidently some difficulty in saying what 
he came to say. 

Mr. Hale’s ever-ready sympathy with anything of shyness 
or hesitation, or want of self-possession, made him come to 
his aid. 

“We shall have tea up directly, and then you’ll take a 
cup with us, Mr. Higgins. I am sure you are tired, if you’ve 
been out much this wet, relaxing day. Margaret, my dear, 
can’t you hasten tea ? ” 

Margaret could only hasten tea by taking the preparation 
361 


North and South 

of it into her own hands, and so offending Dixon, who was 
emerging out of her sorrow for her late mistress into a very 
touchy, irritable state. But Martha, like all who came in 
contact with Margaret — even Dixon herself, in the long run 
— felt it a pleasure and an honour to forward any of her 
wishes ; and her readiness, and Margaret’s sweet forbearance, 
soon made Dixon ashamed of herself. 

“ Why master and you must always be asking the lower 
classes upstairs, since we came to Milton, I cannot under- 
stand. Folk at Helstone were never brought higher 
than the kitchen; and I’ve let one or two of them know 
before now that they might think it an honour to be even 
there.” 

Higgins found it easier to unburden himself to one than 
to two. After Margaret left the room, he went to the door 
and assured himself that it was shut. Then he came and 
stood close to Mr. Hale. 

“ Master,” said he, “ yo’d not guess easy what I’ve been 
tramping after to-day. Special if yo’d remember my manner 
o’ talk yesterday. I’ve been seeking work. I have,” said 
he. “ I said to mysel’, I’d keep a civil tongue in my head, 
let who would say what ’em would. I’d set my teeth into 
my tongue sooner nor speak i’ haste. For that man’s sake 
— yo’ understand,” jerking his thumb back in some unknown 
direction. 

“ No, I don’t,” said Mr. Hale, seeing he waited for some 
kind of assent, and completely bewildered as to who “ that 
man ” could be. 

“ That chap as lies theer,” said he, with another jerk. 
“ Him as went and drownded himself, poor chap ! I did na 
think he’d got it in him to lie still and let the water creep 
o’er him till he died. Boucher, yo’ know.” 

“ Yes, I know now,” said Mr. Hale. “ Go back to what 
you were saying : you’d not speak in haste ” 

“ For his sake. Yet not for his sake ; for where’er he is, 
and whate’er, he’ll ne’er know other clemming or cold again ; 
but for the wife’s sake, and the bits o’ childer.” 

362 


Looking South 

* God bless you ! " said Mr. Hale, starting up ; then, 
calming down, he said breathlessly, “ What do you mean ? 
Tell me out.” 

“ I have telled yo’,” said Higgins, a little surprised at 
Mr. Hale’s agitation. “ I would na ask for work for 
mysef ; but them’s left as a charge on me. I reckon, I 
would ha’ guided Boucher to a better end ; but I set him off 
o’ th’ road, and so I mun answer for him.” 

Mr. Hale got hold of Higgins’s hand and shook it 
heartily, without speaking. Higgins looked awkward and 
ashamed. 

“ Theer, theer, master ! Theer’s ne’er a man, to call a 
man, amongst us, but what would do th’ same ; ay, and 
better too ; for, belie* me, I’se ne’er got a stroke o’ work, nor 
yet a sight of any. For all I telled Hamper that, let alone 
his pledge — which I would not sign — no, I could na, not e’en 
for this — he’d ne’er ha’ such a worker on his mill as I would 
be — he’d ha’ none o’ me — no more would none o’ th’ others. 
I’m a poor, black, feckless sheep — childer may clem for ought 
I can do, unless, parson, yo’d help me ? ” 

“ Help you ! How ? I would do anything, — but what 
can I do ? ” 

“ Miss there ** — for Margaret had re-entered the room, 
and stood silent, listening — “ has often talked grand o’ the 
South, and the ways down there. Now I dunnot know how 
far off it is, but I’ve been thinking if I could get ’em down 
theer, where food is cheap and wages good, and all the folk, 
rich and poor, master and man, friendly like ; yo’ could, may 
be, help me to work. I’m not forty-five, and I’ve a deal o’ 
strength in me, measter.” 

“ But what kind of work could you do, my man ? ” 

“ Well, I reckon I could spade a bit ” 

“ And for that,” said Margaret, stepping forwards, “ for 
anything you could do, Higgins, with the best will in the 
world, you would, maybe, get nine shillings a week ; maybe 
ten, at the outside. Food is much the same as here, except 
that you might have a little garden ” 

363 


North and South 

“ The childer could work at that,” said he. “ I’m sick o’ 
Milton anyways, and Milton is sick o' me.” 

“ You must not go to the South,” said Margaret, “ for all 
that. You could not stand it. You would have to be out 
all weathers. It would kill you with rheumatism. The mere 
bodily work at your time of life would break you down. The 
fare is far different to what you have been accustomed to.” 

“ I’se nought particular about my meat,” said he, as if 
offended. 

“ But you’ve reckoned on having butcher’s meat once a 
day, if you’re in work ; pay for that out of your ten shillings, 
and keep those poor children if you can. I owe it to you — 
since it’s my way of talking that iaas set you off on this idea 
— to put it all clear before you. You would not bear the 
dulness of the life ; you don’t know what it is ; it would eat 
you away like rust. Those that have lived there all their 
lives are used to soaking in the stagnant waters. They 
labour on from day to day, in the great solitude of steaming 
fields — never speaking or lifting up their poor, bent, down- 
cast heads. The hard spade-work robs their brain of life ; 
the sameness of their toil deadens their imagination ; they 
don’t care to meet to talk over thoughts and speculations, 
even of the weakest, wildest kind, after their work is done ; 
they go home brutishly tired, poor creatures ! caring for 
nothing but food and rest. You could not stir them up into 
any companionship, which you get in a town as plentiful as 
the air you breathe, whether it be good or bad — and that I 
don’t know ; but I do know, that you of all men are not one 
to bear a life among such labourers. What would be peace 
to them, would be eternal fretting to you. Think no more 
of it, Nicholas, I beg. Besides, you could never pay to get 
mother and children all there — that’s one good thing.” 

“ I’ve reckoned for that. One house mun do for us a’, 
and the furniture o’ t’other would go a good way. And men 
theer mun have their families to keep — m’appen six or seven 
childer. God help ’em ! ” said he, more convinced by his 
own presentation of the facts than by all Margaret had said, 

3 6 4 


Looking South 

and suddenly renouncing the idea, which had but recently 
formed itself in a brain worn out by the day’s fatigue and 
anxiety. “ God help ’em ! North an’ South have each 
getten their own troubles. If work’s sure and steady theer, 
labour’s paid at starvation prices ; while here we’n rucks o’ 
money coming in one quarter, and ne’er a farthing th’ next. 
For sure, th’ world is in a confusion that passes me or any 
other man to understand ; it needs fettling, and who’s to 
fettle it, if it’s as yon folks say, and there’s nought but what 
we see ? ” 

Mr. Hale was busy cutting bread and butter ; Margaret 
was glad of this, for she saw that Higgins was better left to 
himself : that, if her father began to speak ever so mildly on 
the subject of Higgins’s thoughts, the latter would consider 
himself challenged to an argument, and would feel himself 
bound to maintain his own ground. She and her father 
kept up an indifferent conversation until Higgins, scarcely 
aware whether he ate or not, had made a very substantial 
meal. Then he pushed his chair away from the table, and 
tried to take an interest in what they were saying ; but it 
was of no use ; and he fell back into dreamy gloom. Sud- 
denly, Margaret said (she had been thinking of it for some 
time, but the words had stuck in her throat), “ Higgins, have 
you been to Marlborough Mills to seek for work ? ” 

“ Thornton’s ? ” asked he. “ Ay, I’ve been at Thornton’s ? ” 

“ And what did he say ? ” 

“ Such a chap as me is not like to see the measter. Th’ 
o’erlooker bid me go and be d d.” 

“ I wish you had seen Mr. Thornton,” said Mr. Hale. 
“ He might not have given you work, but he would not have 
used such language.” 

“As to th’ language, I’m welly used to it; it dunnot 
matter to me. I’m not nesh mysel’ when I’m put out. It 
were th’ fact that I werena wanted theer, no more nor ony 
other place, as I minded.” 

“ But I wish you had seen Mr. Thornton,” repeated 
Margaret. “ Would you go again — it’s a good deal to ask, I 

3 6 5 


North and South 

know — but would you go to-morrow and try him ? I should 
be so glad if you would.” 

“ I’m afraid it would be of no use,” said Mr. Hale, in a 
low voice. “ It would be better to let me speak to him.” 
Margaret still looked at Higgins for his answer. Those grave 
soft eyes of hers were difficult to resist. He gave a great 
sigh. 

“ It would tax my pride above a bit ; if it were for mysel’, 
I could stand a deal o’ clemming first ; I’d sooner knock him 
down than ask a favour from him. I’d a deal sooner be 
flogged mysel’ ; but yo’re not a common wench, axing y’or 
pardon, nor yet have yo common ways about yo’. I’ll e’en 
make a wry face, and go at it to-morrow. Dunna yo’ think 
that he’ll do it. That man has it in him to be burnt at 
the stake afore he’ll give in. I do it for yo’r sake, Miss 
Hale, and it’s first time in my life as e’er I give way to a 
woman. Neither my wife nor Bess could e’er say that much 
again’ me.” 

“ All the more do I thank you,” said Margaret, smiling. 
“ Though I don’t believe you : I believe you have just given 
way to wife and daughter as much as most men.” 

“ And as to Mr. Thornton,” said Mr. Hale, “ I’ll give 
you a note to him, which, I think I may venture to say, will 
ensure you a hearing.” 

“ I thank yo’ kindly, sir, but I’d as lief stand on my own 
bottom. I dunnot stomach the notion of having favour 
curried for me, by one as doesn’t know the ins and outs of 
the quarrel. Meddling ’twixt master and man is liker 
meddling ’twixt husband and wife than aught else : it takes 
a deal o' wisdom for to do ony good. I’ll stand guard at 
the lodge door. I’ll stand there fro’ six in the morning till 
I get speech on him. But I’d liefer sweep th’ streets, if 
paupers had na got hold on that work. Dunna yo’ hope, 
miss. There’ll be more chance o’ getting milk out of a flint. 
I wish yo’ a very good night, and many thanks to yo’.” 

“ You’ll find your shoes by the kitchen fire ; I took them 
there to dry,” said Margaret. 

366 


Looking South 

He turned round and looked at her steadily, and then he 
brushed his lean hand across his eyes and went his way. 

“ How proud that man is ! ” said her father, who |was a 
little annoyed at the manner in which Higgins had declined 
his intercession with Mr. Thornton. 

“ He is," said Margaret ; “ but what grand makings of a 
man there are in him, pride and all." 

“ It’s amusing to see how he evidently respects the part 
in Mr. Thornton’s character which is like his own." 

“ There’s granite in all these northern people, papa, is 
there not ? " 

“ There was none in poor Boucher, I am afraid; none in 
his wife either." 

“I should guess from their tones that they had Irish 
blood in them. I wonder what success Higgins will have 
to-morrow. If he and Mr. Thornton would speak out 
together as man to man — if Higgins would forget that Mr. 
Thornton was a master, and speak to him as he does to 
us — and if Mr. Thornton would be patient enough to listen 
to him with his human heart, not with his master’s ears ’’ 

‘ <l You are getting to do Mr. Thornton justice at last, 
Margaret," said her father, pinching her ear. 

Margaret had a strange choking at her heart, which made 
her unable to answer. “ Oh \ " thought she, “ I wish I were 
a man, that I could go and force him to express his disappro- 
bation, and tell him honestly that I knew I deserved it. It 
seems hard to lose him as a friend just when I had begun to 
feel his value. How tender he was with dear mamma ! If 
it were only for her sake, I wish he would come, and then at 
least I should know how much I was abashed in his eyes." 


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North and South 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 

PROMISES FULFILLED 

“ Then proudly, proudly up she rose, 

Tho’ the tear was in her e’e ; 

‘ Whate’er ye say, think what ye may, 

Ye’s get nae word frae me ! ’ ” 

Scotch Ballad. 

It was not merely that Margaret was known to Mr. Thornton 
to have spoken falsely — though she imagined that for this 
reason only was she so turned in his opinion — but that this 
falsehood of hers bore a distinct reference in his mind to 
some other lover. He could not forget the fond and earnest 
look that had passed between her and some other man — the 
attitude of familiar confidence, if not of positive endearment. 
The thought of this perpetually stung him ; it was a picture 
before his eyes, wherever he went and whatever he was 
doing. In addition to this (and he ground his teeth as he 
remembered it) was the hour, dusky twilight; the place, 
so far away from home, and comparatively unfrequented. 
His nobler self had said at first, that all this last might be 
accidental, innocent, justifiable ; but, once allow her right to 
love and be beloved (and had he any reason to deny her 
right ? — had not her words been severely explicit when she 
cast his love away from her ?), she might easily have been 
beguiled into a longer walk, on to a later hour than she had 
anticipated. But that falsehood ! which showed a fatal 
consciousness of something wrong, and to be concealed, 
which was unlike her. He did her that justice, though all 
the time it would have been a relief to believe her utterly 
unworthy of this esteem. It was this that made the misery 
— that he passionately loved her, and thought her, even with 
all her faults, more lovely and more excellent than any other 
woman ; yet he deemed her so attached to some other man, 
so led away by her affection for him, as to violate her 

3$S 


Promises Fulfilled 

truthful nature. The very falsehood that stained her, was 
a proof how blindly she loved another — this dark, slight, 
elegant, handsome man — while he himself was rough, and 
stern, and strongly made. He lashed himself into an agony 
of fierce jealousy. He thought of that look, that attitude ! — 
how he would have laid his life at her feet for such tender 
glances, such fond detention ! He mocked at himself, for 
having valued the mechanical way in which she had pro- 
tected him from the fury of the mob ; now he had seen how 
soft and bewitching she looked when with a man she really 
loved. He remembered, point by point, the sharpness of 
her words — “ There was not a man in all that crowd for 
whom she would not have done as much, far more readily 
than for him.” He shared with the mob, in her desire of 
averting bloodshed from them ; but this man, this hidden 
lover, shared with nobody ; he had looks, words, hand- 
cleavings, lies, concealment, all to himself. 

Mr. Thornton was conscious that he had never been so 
irritable as he was now, in all his life long ; he felt inclined 
to give a short, abrupt answer, more like a bark than a 
speech, to every one that asked him a question ; and this 
consciousness hurt his pride ; he had always piqued himself 
on his self-control, and control himself he would. So the 
manner was subdued to a quiet deliberation, but the matter 
was even harder and sterner than common. He was more 
than usually silent at home; employing his evenings in a 
continual pace backwards and forwards, which would have 
annoyed his mother exceedingly if it had been practised by 
any one else ; and did not tend to promote any forbearance 
on her part even to this beloved son. 

“ Can you stop — can you sit down for a moment ? I 
have something to say to you, if you would give up that 
everlasting walk, walk, walk.” 

He sat down instantly, on a chair against the wall. 

“I want to speak to you about Betsy. She says she 
must leave us; that her lover’s death has so affected her 
spirits she can’t give her heart to her work.” 

369 2 B 


North and South 

“Very well. I suppose other cooks are to be met with.” 

“ That’s so like a man. It’s not merely the cooking, it 
is that she knows all the ways of the house. Besides, she 
tells me something about your friend Miss Hale.” 

“ Miss Hale is no friend of mine. Mr. Hale is my 
friend.** 

“ I am glad to hear you say so ; for, if she had been your 
friend, what Betsy says would have annoyed you." 

“ Let me hear it,” said he, with the extreme quietness of 
manner he had been assuming for the last few days. 

“ Betsy says, that the night on which her lover — I forget 
his name — for she always calls him ‘ he ’ ” 

“ Leonards.” 

“ The night on which Leonards was last seen at the station 
— when he was last seen on duty, in fact — Miss Hale was 
there, walking about with a young man who, Betsy believes, 
killed Leonards by some blow or push.” 

“ Leonards was not killed by any blow or push.” 

“ How do you know ? ” 

“Because I distinctly put the question to the surgeon 
of the Infirmary. He told me there was an internal disease 
of long standing, caused by Leonards’ habit of drinking to 
excess ; that the fact of his becoming rapidly worse while 
in a state of intoxication, settled the question as to whether 
the last fatal attack was caused by excess of drinking, or the 
fah.” 

“The fall! What fall?” 

“ Caused by the blow or push of which Betsy speaks.” 

“ Then there was a blow or push ? ” 

“ I believe so.” 

“ And who did it ? ” 

“ As there was no inquest, in consequence of the doctor’s 
opinion, I cannot tell you.” 

“ But Miss Hale was there ? ” 

No answer. 

“ And with a young man ? ” 

Still no answer. At last he said — “ I tell you, mother, 
37o 


Promises Fulfilled 

that there was no inquest — no inquiry. No judicial inquiry, 
I mean.” 

“ Betsy says that Woolmer (some man she knows, who is 
in a grocer’s shop out at Crampton) can swear that Miss 
Hale was at the station at that hour, walking backwards and 
forwards with a young man.” 

“ I don’t see what we have to do with that. Miss Hale 
is at liberty to please herself.” 

“I’m glad to hear you say so,” said Mrs. Thornton 
eagerly. “ It certainly signifies very little to us — not at all 
to you, after what has passed ! but I — I made a promise 
to Mrs. Hale, that I would not allow her daughter to go 
wrong without advising and remonstrating with her. I 
shall certainly let her know my opinion of such conduct.” 

“ I do not see any harm in what she did that evening,” 
said Mr. Thornton, getting up, and coming near to his 
mother ; he stood by the chimney-piece, with his face turned 
away from the room. 

“ You would not have approved of Fanny’s being seen 
out, after dark, in rather a lonely place, walking about with 
a young man. I say nothing of the taste which could 
choose the time when her mother lay unburied for such a 
promenade. Should you have liked your sister to have been 
noticed by a grocer’s assistant for doing so? ” 

“ In the first place, as it is not many years since I myself 
was a draper’s assistant, the mere circumstance of a grocer’s 
assistant noticing any act does not alter the character of the 
act to me. And in the next place, I see a great deal of differ- 
ence between Miss Hale and Fanny. I can imagine that the 
one may have weighty reasons, which may and ought to 
make her overlook any seeming impropriety in her conduct. 
I never knew Fanny have weighty reasons for anything. 
Other people must guard her. I believe Miss Hale is a 
guardian to herself.” 

“ A pretty character of your sister, indeed ! Really, John, 
one would have thought Miss Hale had done enough to make 
you clear-sighted. She drew you on to an offer, by a bold 

37i 


North and South 

display of pretended regard for yon, — to play you off against 
this very young man, I’ve no doubt. Her whole conduct is 
clear to me now. You believe he is her lover, I suppose — 
you agree to that.” 

He turned round to his mother ; his face was very grey 
and grim. “Yes, mother. I do believe he is her lover.” 
When he had spoken, he turned round again ; he writhed 
himself about, like one in bodily pain. He leant his face 
against his hand. Then before she could speak, he turned 
sharp again — 

“ Mother. He is her lover, whoever he is ; but she may 
need help and womanly counsel ; — there may be difficulties 
or temptations which I don’t know. I fear there are. I don’t 
want to know what they are ; but, as you have ever been a 
good — ay ! and a tender mother to me, go to her, and gain 
her confidence, and tell her what is best to be done. I know 
that something is wrong ; some dread must be a terrible 
torture to her.” 

“ For God's sake, John ! ” said his mother, now really 
shocked, “ what do you mean ? What do you mean ? 
What do you know ? ” 

He did not reply to her. 

“ John ! I don’t know what I shan’t think unless you 
speak. You have no right to say what you have done 
against her.” 

“Not against her, mother ! I could not speak against 
her.” 

“ Well ! you have no right to say what you have done, 
unless you say more. These half -expressions are what ruin 
a woman’s character.” 

“ Her character ! Mother, you do not dare ” he faced 

about, and looked into her face with flaming eyes. Then, 
drawing himself up into determined composure and dignity, 
he said, “ I will not say any more than this, which is neither 
more nor less than the simple truth, and I am sure you 
believe me — I have good reason to believe that Miss Hale 
is in some strait and difficulty connected with an attachment 

372 


Promises Fulfilled 

which, of itself, from my knowledge of Miss Hale’s character, 
is perfectly innocent and right. What my reason is, I 
refuse to tell. But never let me hear any one say a word 
against her, implying any more serious imputation than that 
she now needs the counsel of some kind and gentle woman. 
You promised Mrs, Hale to be that woman ! ” 

“ No ! ” said Mrs. Thornton. “ I am happy to say, I did 
not promise kindness and gentleness, for I felt at the time that 
it might be out of my power to render these to one of Miss 
Hale’s character and disposition. I promised counsel and 
advice, such as I would give to my own daughter ; I shall 
speak to her as I would do to Fanny, if she had gone galli- 
vanting with a young man in the dusk. I shall speak with 
relation to the circumstances I know, without being in- 
fluenced either one way or another by the ‘ strong reasons ’ 
which you will not confide to me. Then I shall have ful- 
filled my promise, and done my duty.” 

“ She will never bear it,” said he passionately. 

“ She will have to bear it, if I speak in her dead mother’s 
name.” 

“ Well ! ” said he, breaking away, “ don’t tell me any 
more about it. I cannot endure to think of it. It will be 
better that you should speak to her any way, than that she 
should not be spoken to at all. — Oh ! that look of love ! ” 
continued he between his teeth, as he bolted himself into his 
own private room. “ And that cursed lie ; which showed 
some terrible shame in the background, to be kept from 
the light in which I thought she lived perpetually ! Oh, 
Margaret, Margaret ! Mother, how you have tortured me ! 
Oh ! Margaret, could you not have loved me ? I am but 
uncouth and hard, but I would never have led you into any 
falsehood for me.” 

The more Mrs. Thornton thought over what her son had 
said, in pleading for a merciful judgment for Margaret’s 
indiscretion, the more bitterly she felt inclined towards her. 
She took a savage pleasure in the idea of “ speaking her 
mind” to her, in the guise of fulfilment of a duty. She 

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North and South 

enjoyed the thought of showing herself untouched by the 
“ glamour ” which she was well aware Margaret had the power 
of throwing over many people. She snorted scornfully over 
the picture of the beauty of her victim ; her jet-black hair, 
her clear smooth skin, her lucid eyes would not help to save 
her one word of the just and stern reproach which Mrs. 
Thornton spent half the night in preparing to her mind. 

“ Is Miss Hale within ? ” She knew she was, for she 
had seen her at the window, and she had her feet inside the 
little hall before Martha had half answered her question. 

Margaret was sitting alone, writing to Edith, and giving 
her many particulars of her mother’s last days. It was a 
softening employment, and she had to brush away the un- 
bidden tears as Mrs. Thornton was announced. 

She was so gentle and ladylike in her mode of reception 
that her visitor was somewhat daunted ; and it became im- 
possible to utter the speech, so easy of arrangement with 
no one to address it to. Margaret’s low rich voice was 
softer than usual; her manner more gracious, because in 
her heart she was feeling very grateful to Mrs. Thornton for 
the courteous attention of her call. She exerted herself to 
find subjects of interest for conversation ; praised Martha, 
the servant whom Mrs. Thornton had found for them ; had 
asked Edith for a little Greek air, about which she had 
spoken to Miss Thornton. Mrs. Thornton was fairly dis- 
comfited. Her sharp Damascus blade seemed out of place 
and useless among rose-leaves. She was silent, because she 
was trying to work herself up to her duty. At last she stung 
herself into its performance by a suspicion which, in spite of 
all probability, she allowed to cross her mind, that all this 
sweetness was put on with a view to propitiating Mr. 
Thornton; that, somehow, the other attachment had fallen 
through, and that it suited Miss Hale’s purpose to recall her 
rejected lover. Poor Margaret ! there was perhaps so much 
truth in the suspicion as this ; that Mrs. Thornton was the 
mother of one whose regard she valued, and feared to have 
lost; and this thought unconsciously added to her natural 

374 


Promises Fulfilled 

desire of pleasing one who was showing her kindness by her 
visit. Mrs. Thornton stood up to go, but yet she seemed to 
have something more to say. She cleared her throat and 
began — 

“ Miss Hale, I have a duty to perform. I promised your 
poor mother that, as far as my poor judgment went, I would 
not allow you to act in any way wrongly, or (she softened 
her speech down a little here) inadvertently, without re- 
monstrating ; at least without offering advice, whether you 
took it or not.” 

Margaret stood before her, blushing like any culprit, with 
her eyes dilating as she gazed at Mrs. Thornton. She 
thought she had come to speak to her about the falsehood 
she had told— that Mr. Thornton had employed her to 
explain the danger she had exposed herself to, of being 
confuted in full court ! and although her heart sank to think 
he had not rather chosen to come himself, and upbraid her, 
and receive her penitence, and restore her again to his good 
opinion, yet she was too much humbled not to bear any 
blame on this subject patiently and meekly. 

Mrs. Thornton went on — 

“ At first, when I heard from one of my servants, that 
you had been seen walking out with a gentleman, so far 
from home as the Outwood station, at such a time of the 
evening, I could hardly believe it. But my son, I am sorry 
to say, confirmed her story. It was indiscreet, to say the 
least ; many a young woman has lost her character before 
now ” 

Margaret’s eyes flashed fire. This was a new idea — this 
was too insulting. If Mrs. Thornton had spoken to her 
about the lie she had told, well and good — she would have 
owned it, and humiliated herself. But to interfere with her 
conduct — to speak of her character ! she — Mrs. Thornton, a 
mere stranger — it was too impertinent! She would not 
answer her — not one word. Mrs. Thornton saw the battle- 
spirit in Margaret’s eyes, and it called up her combativeness 
also. 


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North and South 

“ For your mother’s sake, I have thought it right to warn 
you against such improprieties; they must degrade you in 
the long run in the estimation of the world, even if in fact 
they do not lead you to positive harm.” 

“ For my mother’s sake,” said Margaret, in a tearful 
voice, “ I will bear much ; but I cannot bear everything. 
She never meant me to be exposed to insult, I am sure.” 

“ Insult, Miss Hale ! ” 

“ Yes, madam,” said Margaret more steadily, “ it is 
insult. What do you know of me that should lead you to 
suspect — Oh ! ” said she, breaking down, and covering her 
face with her hands — “ I know now, Mr. Thornton has told 
you ” 

“ No, Miss Hale,” said Mrs. Thornton, her truthfulness 
causing her to arrest the confession Margaret was on the 
point of making, though her curiosity was itching to hear it. 
“ Stop, Mr. Thornton has told me nothing. You do not 
know my son. You are not worthy to know him. He said 
this. Listen, young lady, that you may understand, if you 
can, what sort of a man you rejected. This Milton manu- 
facturer, his great tender heart scorned as it was scorned, 
said to me only last night — ‘ Go to her. I have good reason 
to know that she is in some strait arising out of some 
attachment ; and she needs womanly counsel.’ I believe 
those were his very words. Farther than that — beyond 
admitting the fact of your being at Outwood station with a 
gentleman, on the evening of the twenty-sixth — he has said 
nothing — not one word against you. If he has knowledge 
of anything which should make you sob so, he keeps it to 
himself.” 

Margaret’s face was still hidden in her hands, the fingers 
of which were wet with tears. Mrs. Thornton was a little 
mollified. 

“ Come, Miss Hale. There may be circumstances, I’ll 
allow, that, if explained, may take off from the seeming 
impropriety.” 

Still no answer. Margaret was considering what to say ; 

376 


Promises Fulfilled 

she wished to stand well with Mrs. Thornton ; and yet she 
could not, might not, give any explanation. Mrs. Thornton 
grew impatient. 

“ I shall be sorry to break off an acquaintance ; but for 
Fanny’s sake — as I told my son, if Fanny had done so we 
should consider it a great disgrace — and Fanny might be 
led away ” 

“ I can give you no explanation,” said Margaret, in a 
low voice. “I have done wrong, but not in the way you 
think or know about. I think Mr. Thornton judges me 
more mercifully than you ; ” — she had hard work to keep 
herself from choking with her tears — “ but, I believe, madam, 
you mean to do rightly.” 

“ Thank you,” said Mrs. Thornton, drawing herself up ; 
“ I was not aware that my meaning was doubted. It is 
the last time I shall interfere. I was unwilling to consent 
to do it, when your mother asked me. 1 had not approved 
of my son’s attachment to you, while I only suspected it. 
You did not appear to me worthy of him. But when you 
compromised yourself as you did at the time of the riot, 
and exposed yourself to the comments of servants and 
workpeople, I felt it was no longer right to set myself 
against my son’s wish of proposing to you — a wish, by the 
way, which he had always denied entertaining until the 
day of the riot.” Margaret winced, and drew in her breath 
with a long, hissing sound ; of which, however, Mrs. 
Thornton took no notice. “ He came ; you had apparently 
changed your mind. I told my son yesterday, that I 
thought it possible, short as was the interval, you might 
have heard or learnt something of this other lover ” 

“ What must you think of me, madam ? ” asked Margaret, 
throwing her head back with proud disdain, till her throat 
curved outwards like a swan’s. “ You can say nothing more, 
Mrs. Thornton. I decline every attempt to justify myself 
for anything. You must allow me to leave the room.” 

And she swept out of it with the noiseless grace of an 
offended princess. Mrs. Thornton had quite enough of 

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North and South 

natural humour to make her feel the ludicrousness of the 
position in which she was left. There was nothing for it 
but to show herself out. She was not particularly annoyed 
at Margaret’s way of behaving. She did not care enough 
for her for that. She had taken Mrs. Thornton’s remon- 
strance to the full as keenly to heart as that lady expected ; 
and Margaret’s passion at once mollified her visitor, far 
more than any silence or reserve could have done. It 
showed the effect of her words. “ My young lady,” thought 
Mrs. Thornton to herself ; “ you’ve a pretty good temper 
of your own. If John and you had come together, he would 
have had to keep a tight hand over you, to make you know 
your place. But I don’t think you will go a- walking again 
with your beau, at such an hour of the day, in a hurry. 
You’ve too much pride and spirit in you for that. I like to 
see a girl fly out at the notion of being talked about. It 
shows they’re neither giddy, nor bold by nature. As for 
that girl, she might be bold, but she’d never be giddy. I’ll 
do her that justice. Now as to Fanny, she’d be giddy, and 
not bold. She’s no courage in her, poor thing ! ” 

Mr. Thornton was not spending the morning so satis- 
factorily as his mother. She, at any rate, was fulfilling her 
determined purpose. He was trying to understand where 
he stood ; what damage the strike had done him. A good 
deal of his capital was locked up in new and expensive 
machinery; and he had also bought cotton largely, with 
a view to some great orders which he had in hand. The 
strike had thrown him terribly behindhand, as to the com- 
pletion of these orders. Even with his own accustomed 
and skilled workpeople, he would have had some difficulty 
in fulfilling his engagements ; as it was, the incompetence 
of the Irish hands, who had to be trained to their work, at 
a time requiring unusual activity, was a daily annoyance. 

It was not a favourable hour for Higgins to make his 
request. But he had promised Margaret to do it at any 
cost. So, though every moment added to his repugnance, 
his pride, and his sullenness of temper, he stood leaning 

378 


Promises Fulfilled 

against the dead wall, hour after hour, first on one leg, then 
on the other. At last the latch was sharply lifted, and out 
came Mr. Thornton. 

“ I want for to speak to yo’, sir.” 

“ Can’t stay now, my man. I’m too late as it is.” 

“ Well, sir, I reckon I can wait till yo’ come back.” 

Mr. Thornton was half-way down the street. Higgins 
sighed. But it was no use. To catch him in the street, 
was his only chance of seeing “ the measter ; ” if he had 
rung the lodge bell or even gone up to the house to ask for 
him, he would have been referred to the overlooker. So 
he stood still again, vouchsafing no answer, but a short 
nod of recognition to the few men who knew and spoke 
to him, as the crowd drove out of the mill-yard at dinner- 
time, and scowling with all his might at the Irish “ knob- 
sticks ” who had just been imported. At last Mr. Thornton 
returned. 

“ What ! you there still ? ” 

“ Ay, sir, I mun speak to yo’.” 

“ Come in here, then. Stay, we’ll go across the yard ; the 
men are not come back, and we shall have it to ourselves. 
These good people, I see, are at dinner,” said he, closing the 
door of the porter’s lodge. 

He stopped to speak to the overlooker. The latter said 
in a low tone — 

“ I suppose you know, sir, that that man is Higgins, one 
of the leaders of the Union ; he that made that speech in 
Hurtsfield.” 

“ No, I didn’t,” said Mr. Thornton, looking round sharply 
at his follower. Higgins was known to him by name as a 
turbulent spirit. 

“ Come along,” said he, and his tone was rougher than 
before. “It is men such as this,” thought he, “who in- 
terrupt commerce and injure the very town they live in : 
mere demagogues, lovers of power, at whatever cost to 
others.” 

“ Well, sir ! what do you want with me ? ” said Mr. 

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North and South 

Thornton, facing round at him, as soon as they were in the 
counting-house of the mill. 

“ My name is Higgins ” 

“ I know that,” broke in. Mr. Thornton. “ What do you 
want, Mr. Higgins? That’s the question.” 

“ I want work.” 

“ Work ! You’re a pretty chap to come asking me for 
work. You don’t want impudence, that’s very clear.” 

“ I’ve getten enemies and backbiters, like my betters ; but 
I never heerd o’ ony of them calling me o’er-modest,” said 
Higgins. His blood was a little roused by Mr. Thornton’s 
manner, more than by his words. 

Mr. Thornton saw a letter addressed to himself on the 
table. He took it up and read it through. At the end, he 
looked up and said, “ What are you waiting for ? ’ 

“ An answer to th’ question I axed.” 

“ I gave it you before. Don’t waste any more of your 
time.” 

“ Yo’ made a remark, sir, on my impudence : but I were 
taught that it was manners to say either ‘ yes ’ or ‘ no,’ when 
I were axed a civil question. I should be thankfu’ to yo’ if 
yo’d give me work. Hamper will speak to my being a good 
hand.” 

“ I’ve a notion you’d better not send me to Hamper to 
ask for a character, my man. I might hear more than 
you’d like.” 

“ I’d take th’ risk. Worst they could say of me is, that 
I did what I thought best, even to my own wrong.” 

“ You’d better go and try them, then, and see whether 
they’ll give you work. I’ve turned off upwards of a hundred 
of my best hands, for no other fault than following you, and 
such as you ; and d’ye think I’ll take you on ? I might as 
well put a firebrand into the midst of the cotton- waste.” 

Higgins turned away : then the recollection of Boucher 
came over him, and he faced round with the greatest con- 
cession he could persuade himself to make. 

“ I’d promise yo’, measter, I’d not speak a word as could 
38° 


Promises Fulfilled 

do harm, if so be yo’ did right by us ; and I’d promise more : 
I’d promise that when I seed yo’ going wrong, and acting 
unfair, I'd speak to yo' in private first ; and that would be 
a fair warning. If yo’ and I did na agree in our opinion 
o’ your conduct, yo’ might turn me off at an hour’s notice.” 

“ Upon my word, you don’t think small beer of yourself ! 
Hamper has had a loss of you. How came he to let you 
and your wisdom go ? ” 

“ Well, we parted wi’ mutual dissatisfaction. I wouldn’t 
gi’e the pledge they were asking; and they wouldn’t have 
me at no rate. So I’m free to make another engagement; 
and, as I said before, though I should na say it, I’m a good 
hand, measter, and a steady man — specially when I can 
keep fro’ drink ; and that I shall do now, if I ne’er did 
afore.” 

“ That you may have more money laid up for another 
strike, I suppose ? ” 

“ No ! I’d be thankful if I was free to do that ; it’s for 
to keep th’ widow and childer of a. man who was drove mad 
by them knobsticks o’ yourn ; put out of his place by a 
Paddy that did na know weft fro’ warp.” 

“ Well ! you’d better turn to something else, if you’ve 
any such good intention in your head. I shouldn’t advise 
you to stay in Milton ; you’re too well known here.” 

“ If it were summer,” said Higgins, “ I’d take to Paddy’s 
work, and go as a navvy, or haymaking, or summat, and 
ne’er see Milton again. But it’s winter, and th’ childer will 
clem.” 

“ A pretty navvy you’d make ! why, you couldn’t do half 
a day’s work at digging against an Irishman.” 

“ I’d only charge half a day for th’ twelve hours, if I could 
only do half a day’s work in th’ time. You’re not knowing 
of any place, where they could gi’ me a trial, away fro’ the 
mills, if I’m such a firebrand? I’d take any wage they 
thought I was worth, for the sake of those childer.” 

“ Don’t you see what you would be ? You’d be a knob- 
stick. You’d be taking less wages than the other labourers 

38i 


North and South 

— all for the sake of another man’s children. Think how 
you’d abuse any poor fellow who was willing to take what 
he could get to keep his own children. You and your Union 
would soon be down upon him. No ! no ! if it’s only for 
the recollection of the way in which you’ve used the poor 
knobsticks before now, I say No ! to your question. 1*11 not 
give you .work. I won’t say, I don’t believe your pretext for 
coming and asking for work ; I know nothing about it. It 
may be true, or it may not. It’s a very unlikely story, at 
any rate. Let me pass. I’ll not give you work. There’s 
your answer.” 

“I hear, sir. I would na ha’ troubled yo’, but that I 
were bid to come, by one as seemed to think yo’d getten 
some soft place in your heart. Hoo were mistook, and I 
were misled. But I’m not the first man as is misled by 
a woman.” 

“ Tell her to mind her own business the next time, instead 
of taking up your time and mine too. I believe women are 
at the bottom of every plague in this world. Be off with 
you.” 

“ I’m obleeged to you for a’ yo’r kindness, measter, and 
most of a’ for yo’r civil way o’ saying good-bye.” 

Mr. Thornton did not deign a reply. But, looking out of 
the window a minute after, he was struck with the lean, 
bent figure going out of the yard ; the heavy walk was in 
strange contrast with the resolute, clear determination of the 
man to speak to him. He crossed to the porter’s lodge — 

“ How long has that man Higgins been waiting to speak 
to me ? ” 

“ He was outside the gate before eight o’clock, sir. I think 
he’s been there ever since.” 

“ And it’s now ” 

“Just one, sir.” 

“ Five hours,” thought Mr. Thornton ; “ it’s a long time 
for a man to wait, doing nothing but first hoping and then 
fearing.” 


382 


Making Friends 


CHAPTEE XXXIX 

MAKING FRIENDS 

“ Nay, I have done ; you get no more of me : 

And I am glad, yea glad with all my heart, 

That thus so clearly I myself am free.” 

Drayton. 

Margaret shut herself up in her own room, after she had 
quitted Mrs. Thornton. She began to walk backwards and 
forwards, in her old habitual way of showing agitation ; but 
then, remembering that in that slightly-built house every 
step was heard from one room to another, she sate down 
until she heard Mrs. Thornton go safely out of the house. 
She forced herself to recollect all the conversation that had 
passed between them ; speech by speech, she compelled her 
memory to go through with it. At the end, she rose up, 
and said to herself, in a melancholy tone — 

“ At any rate, her words do not touch me ; they fall off 
from me ; for I am innocent of all the motives she attributes 
to me. But still, it is hard to think that any one — any 
woman — can believe all this of another so easily. It is hard 
and sad. Where I have done wrong, she does not accuse 
me — she does not know. He never told her : I might have 
known he would not ! ” 

She lifted up her head, as if she took pride in any delicacy 
of feeling which Mr. Thornton had shown. Then, as a new 
thought came across her, she pressed her hands tightly 
together — 

“ He, too, must take poor Frederick for some lover.” 
(She blushed as the word passed through her mind.) “ I see 
it now. It is not merely that he knows of my falsehood, 
but he believes that some one else cares for me ; and that 

•I Oh dear ! — oh dear ! What shall I do ? What do I 

mean ? Why do I care what he thinks, beyond the mere 
loss of his good opinion as regards my telling the truth or 

383 


North and South 

not ? I cannot tell. But I am very miserable ! Oh, how 
unhappy this last year has been ! I have passed out of 
childhood into old age. I have had no youth — no woman- 
hood ; the hopes of womanhood have closed for me — for I 
shall never marry ; and I anticipate cares and sorrows just 
as if I were an old woman, and with the same fearful spirit. 
I am weary of this continual call upon me for strength. I 
could bear up for papa; because that is a natural, pious 
duty. And I think I could bear up against — at any rate, 1 
could have the energy to resent, Mrs. Thornton’s unjust, im- 
pertinent suspicions. But it is hard to feel how completely 
he must misunderstand me. What has happened to make 
me so morbid to-day ? I do not know. I only know I can- 
not help it. I must give way sometimes. No, I will not, 
though,” said she, springing to her feet. “ I will not — I mil 
not think of myself and my own position. I won’t examine 
into my own feelings. It would be of no use now. Some 
time, if I live to be an old woman, I may sit over the fire, 
and, looking into the embers, see the life that might have 
been.” 

All this time she was hastily putting on her things to go 
out, only stopping from time to time to wipe her eyes, with 
an impatience of gesture at the tears that would come, in 
spite of all her bravery. 

“ I dare say there’s many a woman makes as sad a 
mistake as I have done, and only finds it out too late. And 
how proudly and impertinently I spoke to him that day ! 
But I did not know then. It has come upon me little by 
little, and I don’t know where it began. Now I won’t give 
way. I shall find it difficult to behave in the same way to 
him, with this miserable consciousness upon me ; but I will 
be very calm and very quiet, and say very little. But, to be 
sure, I may not see him ; he keeps out of our way evidently. 
That would be worse than all. And yet no wonder that he 
avoids me, believing what he must about me.” 

She went out, going rapidly towards the country, and 
trying to drown reflection by swiftness of motion. 

384 


Making Friends 

As she stood on the door-step, at her return, her father 
came up — 

“ Good girl ! ” said he. “ You’ve been to Mrs. Boucher’s. 
I was just meaning to go there, if I had time, before 
dinner.” 

“ No, papa; I have not,” said Margaret, reddening. “I 
never thought about her. But I will go directly after dinner ; 
I will go while you are taking your nap.” 

Accordingly Margaret went. Mrs. Boucher was very ill ; 
really ill — not merely ailing. The kind and sensible neigh- 
bour, who had come in the other day, seemed to have taken 
charge of everything. Some of the children were gone to 
the neighbours. Mary Higgins had come for the three 
youngest at dinner-time ; and since then Nicholas had gone 
for the doctor. He had not come as yet ; Mrs. Boucher was 
dying ; and there was nothing to do but to wait. Margaret 
thought that she should like to know his opinion, and that 
she could not do better than go and see the Higginses in 
the meantime. She might then possibly hear whether 
Nicholas had been able to make his application to Mr. 
Thornton. 

She found Nicholas busily engaged in making a penny 
spin on the dresser, for the amusement of three little children, 
who were clinging to him in a fearless manner. He, as 
well as they, were smiling at a good long spin; and Mar- 
garet thought that the happy look of interest in his occupa- 
tion was a good sign. When the penny stopped spinning, 
“ lile Johnnie ” began to cry. 

“ Come to me,” said Margaret, taking him off the dresser, 
and holding him in her arms ; she held her watch to his ear, 
while she asked Nicholas if he had seen Mr. Thornton. 

The look on his face changed instantly. 

“ Av ! ” said he. “ I’ve seen and heerd too much on 
him.” 

“He refused you, then ? ” said Margaret sorrowfully. 

“ To be sure. I knew he’d do it all along. It’s no good 
expecting marcy at the hands o’ them measters. Yo’re a 

385 2 c 


North and South 

stranger and a foreigner, and aren’t likely to know their 
ways ; but I knowed it.” 

“ I am sorry I asked you. Was he angry ? He did not 
speak to you as Hamper did, did he ? ” 

“ He weren’t o’er civil ! ” said Nicholas, spinning the 
penny again, as much for his own amusement as for that of 
the children. “ Never yo’ fret, I’m only where I was. I’ll 
go on tramp to-morrow. I gave him as good as I got. I 
telled him, I’d not that good opinion on him that I’d ha’ 
come a second time of mysel’ ; but yo’d advised me for to 
come, and I were beholden to yo’.” 

“ You told him I sent you ? ” 

“ I dunno, if I ca’ d yo’ by your name. I dunnot think I 
did. I said a woman who knew no better had advised me 
for to come and see if there was a soft place in his heart.” 

“ And he ” asked Margaret. 

“ Said I were to tell yo’ to mind yo’r own business. — 
That’s the longest spin yet, my lads. — And them’s civil words 
to what he used to me. But ne’er mind. We’re but where 
we was ; and I’ll break stones on the road afore I let these 
little ’uns clem.” 

Margaret put the struggling Johnnie out of her arms, 
back into his former place on the dresser. 

“ I am sorry I asked you to go to Mr. Thornton’s. I am 
disappointed in him.” 

There was a slight noise behind her. Both she and 
Nicholas turned round at the same moment, and there stood 
Mr. Thornton, with a look of displeased surprise upon his 
face. Obeying her swift impulse, Margaret passed out before 
him, saying not a word, only bowing low to hide the sudden 
paleness that she felt had come over her face. He bent 
equally low in return, and then closed the door after her. 
As she hurried to Mrs. Boucher’s, she heard the clang, and it 
seemed to fill up the measure of her mortification. He too 
was annoyed to find her there. He had tenderness in his 
heart — “ a soft place,” as Nicholas Higgins called it ; but he 
had some pride in concealing it ; he kept it very sacred and 

386 


Making Friends 

safe, and was jealous of every circumstance that tried to gain 
admission. But if he dreaded exposure of his tenderness, he 
was equally desirous that all men should recognise his 
justice ; and he felt that he had been unjust in giving so 
scornful a hearing to any one who had waited, with humble 
patience, for five hours, to speak to him. 

That the man had spoken saucily to him when he had 
the opportunity, was nothing to Mr. Thornton. He rather 
liked him for it ; and he was conscious of his own irritability 
of temper at the time, which probably made them both quits. 
It was the five hours of waiting that struck Mr. Thornton. 
He had not five hours to spare himself ; but one hour — two 
hours, of his hard, penetrating intellectual, as well as bodily, 
labour, did he give up to going about collecting evidence as 
to the truth of Higgins’s story, the nature of his character, 
the tenor of his life. He tried not to be, but was convinced 
that all that Higgins had said was true. And then the con- 
viction went in, as if by some spell, and touched the latent 
tenderness of his heart ; the patience of the man, the simple 
generosity of the motive (for he had learnt about the quarrel 
between Boucher and Higgins), made him forget entirely the 
mere reasonings of justice, and overleap them by a diviner 
instinct. He came to tell Higgins he would give him work ; 
and he was more annoyed to find Margaret there than by 
hearing her last words ; for then he understood that she was 
the woman who had urged Higgins to come to him ; and he 
dreaded the admission of any thought of her, as a motive to 
what he was doing solely because it was right. 

“ So that was the lady you spoke of as a woman ? ” said 
he indignantly to Higgins. “ You might have told me who 
she was.” 

“ And then, maybe, yo’d ha’ spoken of her more civil than 
yo’ did; yo’d getten a mother who might ha’ kept yo’r 
tongue in check when yo’ were talking o’ women being at 
the root of all the plagues.” 

“ Of course you told that to Miss Hale.” 

“ In coorse I did. Leastways, I reckon I did. I telled 

387 


North and South 

her she weren’t to meddle again in aught that concerned 
yo’ ? ” 

“ Whose children are those — yours ? ” Mr. Thornton 
had a pretty good notion whose they were, from what he 
had heard ; but he felt awkward in turning the conversation 
round from this unpromising beginning. 

“ They’re not mine, and they are mine/’ 

“They are the children you spoke of to me this 
morning ? ” 

“ When yo’ said,” replied Higgins, turning round, with 
ill- smothered fierceness, “that my story might be true or 
might not, but it were a very unlikely one. Measter, I’ve 
not forgotten.” 

Mr. Thornton was silent for a moment; then he said — 
“No more have I. I remember what I said. I spoke to 
you about those children in a way I had no business to do. 
I did not believe you. I could not have taken care of 
another man’s children myself, if he had acted towards me 
as I hear Boucher did towards you. But I know now that 
you spoke truth. I beg your pardon.” 

Higgins did not turn round, or immediately respond to 
this. But when he did speak, it was in a softened tone, 
although the words were gruff enough. 

“Yo’ve no business to go prying into what happened 
between Boucher and me. He’s dead and I’m sorry. That’s 
enough.” 

“ So it is. Will you take work with me ? That’s what 
I came to ask.” 

Higgins’s obstinacy wavered, recovered strength, and 
stood firm. He would not speak. Mr. Thornton would not 
ask again. Higgins’s eye fell on the children. 

“ Yo’ve called me impudent, and a liar, and a mischief- 
maker, and yo’ might ha’ said wi’ some truth, as I were now 
and then given to drink. An’ I ha’ called you a tyrant, an’ 
an oud bull-dog, and a hard, cruel master : that’s where it 
stands. But for th’ childer. Measter, do yo’ think we can 
e’er get on together ? ” 


388 


Making Friends 

“ Well ! ” said Mr. Thornton, half-laughing, “ it was not 
my proposal that we should go together. But there’s one 
comfort, on your own showing. We neither of us can think 
much worse of the other than we do now.” 

“ That’s true,” said Higgins reflectively. “ I’ve been 
thinking, ever sin’ I saw you, what a mercy it were yo’ did 
na take me on, for that I ne’er saw a man whom I could 
less abide. But that’s maybe been a hasty judgment ; and 
work’s work to such as me. So, measter, I’ll come ; and 
what’s more, I thank yo’ ; and that’s a deal fro’ me,” said 
he, more frankly, suddenly turning round and facing Mr. 
Thornton fully for the first time. 

“ And this is a deal from me,” said Mr. Thornton, giving 
Higgins’s hand a good grip. “Now mind, you come sharp 
to your time,” continued he, resuming the master. “ I’ll 
have no laggards at my mill. What fines we have, we keep 
pretty sharply. And the first time I catch you making 
mischief, off you go. So now you know where y.ou are.” 

“ Yo’ spoke of my wisdom this morning. I reckon I 
may bring it wi’ me; or would yo’ rayther have me ’bout 
my brains ! ” 

“ ’Bout your brains if you use them for meddling with 
my business ; with your brains if you can keep to your own.” 

“ I shall need a deal o’ brains to settle where my business 
ends and yo’rs begins.” 

“ Your business has not begun yet, and mine stands still 
for me. So good afternoon.” 

Just before Mr. Thornton came up to Mrs. Boucher’s 
door, Margaret came out of it. She did not see him ; and 
he followed her for several yards, admiring her light and 
easy walk, and her tall and graceful figure. But, suddenly, 
this simple emotion of pleasure was tainted, poisoned by 
jealousy. He wished to overtake her, and speak to her, to 
see how she would receive him, now she must know he was 
aware of some other attachment. He wished too, but of this 
wish he was rather ashamed, that she should know that he 
had justified her wisdom in sending Higgins to him to ask 

389 


North and South 

for work, and had repented him of his morning’s decision. 
He came up to her. She started. 

“ Allow me to say, Miss Hale, that you were rather 
premature in expressing your disappointment. I have taken 
Higgins on.” 

“Iam glad of it,” said she coldly. 

“ He tells me, he repeated to you, what 1 said this 

morning about ” Mr. Thornton hesitated. Margaret 

took it up — 

“ About women not meddling. You had a perfect right 
to express your opinion, which was a very correct one, I 
have no doubt. But,” she went on a little more eagerly, 
“ Higgins did not quite tell you the exact truth.” The word 
“ truth ” reminded her of her own untruth, and she stopped 
short, feeling exceedingly uncomfortable. 

Mr. Thornton at first was puzzled to account for her 
silence ; and then he remembered the lie she had told, and 
all that was foregone. “ The exact truth ! ” said he. “ Very 
few people do speak the exact truth. I have given up hoping 
for it. Miss Hale, have you no explanation to give me ? 
You must perceive what I cannot but think.” 

Margaret was silent. She was wondering whether an 
explanation of any kind would be consistent with her loyalty 
to Frederick. 

“ Nay,” said he, “ I will ask no farther. I maybe putting 
temptation in your way. At present, believe me, your secret 
is safe with me. But you run great risks, allow me to say, 
in being so indiscreet. I am now only speaking as a friend of 
your father’s : if I had any other thought or hope, of course 
that is at an end. I am quite disinterested." 

“ I am aware of that,” said Margaret, forcing herself to 
speak in an indifferent, careless way. “Iam aware of what 
I must appear to you, but the secret is another person’s, and 
I cannot explain it without doing him harm.” 

“ I have not the slightest wish to pry into the gentleman’s 
secrets,” he said, with growing anger. “ My own interest 
in you is — simply that of a friend. You may not believe me, 

390 


Making Friends 

Miss Hale, but it is — in spite of the persecution I’m afraid I 
threatened you with at one time— but that is all given up ; 
all passed away. You believe me, Miss Hale? ” 

“ Yes,” said Margaret, quietly and sadly. 

“ Then, really, I don’t see any occasion for us to go on 
walking together. I thought, perhaps, you might have had 
something to say, but I see we are nothing to each other. 
If you’re quite convinced, that any foolish passion on my 
part is entirely over, I will wish you good afternoon.” He 
walked off very hastily. 

“ What can he mean ? ” thought Margaret — “ what could 
he mean by speaking so, as if I were always thinking that 
he cared for me, when I know he does not; he cannot. 
His mother will have said all those cruel things about me 
to him. But I won’t care for him. I surely am mistress 
enough of myself to control this wild, strange, miserable 
feeling, which tempted me even to betray my own dear 
Frederick, so that I might but regain his good opinion — the 
good opinion of a man who takes such pains to tell me that 
I am nothing to him. Come ! poor little heart ! be cheery 
and brave. We’ll be a great deal to one another, if we are 
thrown off and left desolate.” 

Her father was almost startled by her merriment this 
morning. She talked incessantly, and forced her natural 
humour to an unusual pitch; and if there was a tinge of 
bitterness in much of what she said ; if her accounts of the 
old Harley Street set were a little sarcastic, her father could 
not bear to check her, as he would have done at another 
time — for he was glad to see her shake off her cares. In 
the middle of the evening, she was called down to speak to 
Mary Higgins ; and, when she came back, Mr. Hale imagined 
that he saw traces of tears on her cheeks. But that could 
not be, for she brought good news — that Higgins had got 
work at Mr. Thornton’s mill. Her spirits were damped, at 
any rate, and she found it very difficult to go on talking at 
all, much more in the wild way that she had done. For 
some days her spirits varied strangely ; and her father was 

39i 


North and South 

beginning to be anxious about her, when news Arrived from 
one or two quarters that promised some change and variety 
for her. Mr. Hale received a letter from Mr. Bell, in which 
that gentleman volunteered a visit to them ; and Mr. Hale 
imagined that the promised society of his old Oxford friend 
would give as agreeable a turn to Margaret’s ideas as it did 
to his own. Margaret tried to take an interest in what 
pleased her father ; but she was too languid to care about 
any Mr. Bell, even though he were twenty times her god- 
father. She was more roused by a letter from Edith, full of 
sympathy about her aunt’s death ; full of details about her- 
self, her husband, and child ; and at the end saying, that, as 
the climate did not suit the baby, and as Mrs. Shaw was 
talking of returning to England, she thought it probable that 
Captain Lennox might sell out, and that they might all go 
and live again in the old Harley Street house; which, how- 
ever, would seem very incomplete without Margaret. Mar- 
garet yearned after that old house, and the placid tranquillity 
of that well-ordered, monotonous life. She had found it 
occasionally tiresome while it lasted ; but since then she had 
been buffeted about, and felt so exhausted by this recent 
struggle with herself, that she thought that even stagnation 
would be a rest and a refreshment. So she began to look 
towards a long visit to the Lennoxes, on their return to Eng- 
land, as to a point — no, not of hope, but of leisure, in which 
she could regain her power and command over herself. At 
present it seemed to her as if all subjects tended towards 
Mr. Thornton ; as if she could not forget him with all her 
endeavours. If she went to see the Higginses, she heard of 
him there ; her father had resumed their readings together, 
and quoted his opinions perpetually; even Mr. Bell’s visit 
brought his tenant’s name upon the tapis ; for he wrote word, 
that he believed he must be occupied some great part of his 
time with Mr. Thornton, as a new lease was in preparation, 
and the terms of it must be agreed upon. 


392 


Out of Tune 


CHAPTER XL 

OUT OF TUNE 

“ I have no wrong, where I can claim no right, 

Naught ta’en me fro’, where I have nothing had, 

Yet of my woe I cannot so be quite : 

Namely, since that another may be glad 
With that, that thus in sorrow makes me sad.” 

Wyatt. 

Margaret had not expected much pleasure to herself from 
Mr. Bell’s visit — she had only looked forward to it on her 
father’s account ; but, when her godfather came, she at once 
fell into the most natural position of friendship in the world. 
He said she had no merit in being what she was, a girl so 
entirely after his own heart ; it was an hereditary power 
which she had, to walk in and take possession of his regard ; 
while she, in reply, gave him much credit for being so fresh 
and young under his Fellow’s cap and gown. 

“ Fresh and young in warmth and kindness, I mean. 
I’m afraid I must own, that I think your opinions are the 
oldest and mustiest I have met with this long time.” 

“ Hear this daughter of yours, Hale ! Her residence in 
Milton has quite corrupted her. She’s a democrat, a red 
republican, a member of the Peace Society, a socialist ” 

“ Papa, it’s all because I’m standing up for the progress 
of commerce. Mr. Bell would have had it keep still at 
exchanging wild-beast skins for acorns.” 

“ No, no. I’d dig the ground and grow potatoes. And 
I’d shave the wild-beast skins and make the wool into broad 
cloth. Don’t exaggerate, missy. But I’m tired of this 
bustle. Everybody rushing over everybody, in their hurry 
to get rich.” 

“It is not every one who can sit comfortably in a set of 
college rooms, and let his riches grow without any exertion 
of his own. No doubt there is many a man here who 

393 


North and South 

would be thankful if his property would increase as yours 
has done, without his taking any trouble about it,” said 
Mr. Hale. 

“ I don’t believe they would. It’s the bustle and the 
struggle they like. As for sitting still, and learning from 
the past, or shaping out the future by faithful work done in 
a prophetic spirit — Why! Pooh! I don’t believe there’s a 
man in Milton who knows how to sit still; and it is a 
great art.” 

“ Milton people, I suspect, think Oxford men don’t know 
how to move. It would be a very good thing if they mixed 
a little more.” 

“ It might be good for the Miltoners. Many things 
might be good for them which would be very disagreeable 
for other people.” 

“ Are you not a Milton man yourself ? ” asked Margaret. 
“ I should have thought you would have been proud of your 
town.” 

“ I confess, I don’t see what there is to be proud of. If 
you’ll only come to Oxford, Margaret, I will show you a 
place to glory in.” 

“ Well ! ” said Mr. Hale, t( Mr. Thornton is coming to 
drink tea with us to-night, and he is as proud of Milton as 
you of Oxford. You two must try and make each other 
a little more liberal-minded,” 

“I don’t want to be more liberal-minded, thank you,” 
said Mr. Bell. 

“ Is Mr. Thornton coming to tea, papa ? ” asked Margaret, 
in a low voice. 

“ Either to tea or soon after. He could not tell. He 
told* us not to wait.” 

Mr. Thornton had determined that he would make no 
inquiry of his mother as to how far she had put her project 
into execution of speaking to Margaret about the impropriety 
of her conduct. He felt pretty sure that, if this interview 
took place, his mother’s account of what passed at it would 
only annoy and chagrin him, though he would all the time 

394 


Out of Tune 

be aware of the colouring which it received by passing 
through her mind. He shrank from hearing Margaret’s 
very name mentioned ; he, while he blamed her — while he 
was jealous of her — while he renounced her — loved her 
sorely, in spite of himself. He dreamt of her ; he dreamt 
she came dancing towards him with outspread arms, and 
with a lightness and gaiety which made him loathe her, even 
while it allured him. But the impression of this figure of 
Margaret — with all Margaret’s character taken out of it, as 
completely as if some evil spirit had got possession of her 
form — was so deeply stamped upon his imagination, that 
when he wakened he felt hardly able to separate the Una 
from the Duessa ; and the dislike he had to the latter seemed 
to envelop and disfigure the former. Yet he was too proud 
to acknowledge his weakness by avoiding the sight of her. 
He would neither seek an opportunity of being in her 
company nor avoid it. To convince himself of his power of 
self-control, he lingered over every piece of business this 
afternoon ; he forced every movement into unnatural slow- 
ness and deliberation; and it was consequently past eight 
o’clock before he reached Mr. Hale’s. Then there were 
business arrangements to be transacted in the study with 
Mr. Bell ; and the latter kept on, sitting over the fire, and 
talking wearily, long after all business was transacted, and 
when they might just as well have gone upstairs. But Mr. 
Thornton would not say a word about moving their quarters ; 
he chafed and chafed, and thought Mr. Bell a most prosy 
companion ; while Mr. Bell returned the compliment in 
secret by considering Mr. Thornton about as brusque and 
curt a fellow as he had ever met with, and terribly gone off 
both in intelligence and manner. At last, some slight noise 
in the room above suggested the desirableness of moving 
there. They found Margaret with a letter open before her, 
eagerly discussing its contents with her father. On the 
entrance of the gentlemen, it was immediately put aside ; 
but Mr. Thornton’s eager senses caught some few words of 
Mr. Hale’s to Mr. Bell. 


3 95 


North and South 

“ A letter from Henry Lennox. It makes Margaret very 
hopeful.” 

Mr. Bell nodded. Margaret was red as a rose when Mr. 
Thornton looked at her. He had the greatest mind in the 
world to get up and go out of the room that very instant and 
never set foot in the house again. 

“We were thinking,” said Mr. Hale, “ that you and 
Mr. Thornton had taken Margaret’s advice, and were each 
trying to convert the other, you were so long in the study.” 

“ And you thought there would be nothing left of us 
but an opinion, like the Kilkenny cat’s tail. Pray whose 
opinion did you think would have the most obstinate 
vitality ? ” 

Mr. Thornton had not a notion what they were talking 
about, and disdained to inquire. Mr. Hale politely en- 
lightened him. 

“ Mr. Thornton, we were accusing Mr. Bell this morning 
of a kind of Oxonian mediaeval bigotry against his native 
town ; and we — Margaret, I believe — suggested that it 
would do him good to associate a little with Milton manu- 
facturers.” 

“ I beg your pardon. Margaret thought it would do the 
Milton manufacturers good to associate a little more with 
Oxford men. Now wasn’t it so, Margaret ? ” 

“ I believe I thought it would do both good to see a little 
more of the other — I did not know it was my idea any more 
than papa’s.” 

“ And so you see, Mr. Thornton, we ought to have been 
improving each other downstairs, instead of talking over 
vanished families of Smiths and Harrisons. However, I am 
willing to do my part now. I wonder when you Milton men 
intend to live. All your lives seem to be spent in gathering 
together the materials for life.” 

“ By living, I suppose you mean enjoyment.” 

“Yes, enjoyment — I don’t specify of what, because I 
trust we should both consider mere pleasure as very poor 
enjoyment.” 


39 6 


Out of Tune 

“ I would rather have the nature of the enjoyment 
defined.” 

“ Well ! enjoyment of leisure — enjoyment of the power 
and influence which money gives. You are all striving for 
money. What do you want it for ? ” 

Mr. Thornton was silent. Then he said, “ I really don’t 
know. But money is not what I strive for.” 

“ What then ? ” 

“ It is a home question. I shall have to lay myself open 
to such a catechist, and I am not sure that I am prepared 
to do it.” 

“ No ! ” said Mr. Hale ; “ don’t let us be personal in our 
catechism. You are neither of you representative men ; you 
are each of you too individual for that.” 

“ I am not sure whether to consider that as a compli- 
ment or not. I should like to be the representative of 
Oxford, with its beauty and its learning, and its proud 
old history. What do you say, Margaret; ought I to be 
flattered ? ” 

“ I don’t know Oxford. But there is a difference between 
being the representative of a city and the representative man 
of its inhabitants.” 

“ Very true, Miss Margaret. Now I remember, you were 
against me this morning, and were quite Miltonian and 
manufacturing in your preferences.” 

Margaret saw the quick glance of surprise that Mr. 
Thornton gave her, and she was annoyed at the construction 
which he might put on this speech of Mr. Bell’s. Mr. Bell 
went on — 

“ Ah ! I wish I could show you our High Street— our 
Radcliffe Square. I am leaving out our colleges, just as I 
give Mr. Thornton leave to omit his factories in speaking of 
the charms of Milton. I have a right to abuse my birthplace. 
Remember, I am a Milton man.” 

Mr. Thornton was annoyed more than he ought to have 
been at all that Mr. Bell was saying. He was not in a mood 
for joking. At another time, he could have enjoyed Mr. Bell’s 

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half-testy condemnation of a town where the life was so at 
variance with every habit he had formed ; but, now, he was 
galled enough to attempt to defend what was never meant 
to be seriously attacked. 

“ I don’t set up Milton as a model of a town.” 

“ Not in architecture ? ” slyly asked Mr. Bell. 

“ No ! We’ve been too busy to attend to mere outward 
appearances.” 

“ Don’t say mere outward appearances,” said Mr. Hale 
gently. “ They impress us all, from childhood upward — 
every day of our life.” 

“ Wait a little while,” said Mr. Thornton. “ Remember 
we are of a different race from the Greeks, to whom beauty 
was everything, and to whom Mr. Bell might speak of a life 
of leisure and serene enjoyment, much of which entered in 
through their outward senses. I don’t mean to despise 
them, any more than I would ape them. But I belong to 
Teutonic blood ; it is little mingled in this part of England to 
what it is in others ; we retain much of their language ; we 
retain more of their spirit ; we do not look upon life as a 
time for enjoyment, but as a time for action and exertion. 
Our glory and our beauty arise out of our inward strength, 
which makes us victorious over material resistance, and over 
greater difficulties still. We are Teutonic up here in Dark- 
shire in another way. We hate to have laws made for us 
at a distance. We wish people would allow us to right our- 
selves, instead of continually meddling, with their imperfect 
legislation. We stand up for self-government, and oppose 
centralisation.” 

“In short, you would like the Heptarchy back again. 
Well, at any rate, I revoke what I said this morning — that 
you Milton people did not reverence the past. You are 
regular worshippers of Thor.” 

“If we do not reverence the past as you do in Oxford, it 
is because we want something which can apply to the pre- 
sent more directly. It is fine when the study of the past 
leads to a prophecy of the future. But to men groping in 

398 


Out of Tune 

new circumstances, it would be finer if the words of experi- 
ence could direct us how to act in what concerns us most 
intimately and immediately ; which is full of difficulties that 
must be encountered ; and upon the mode in which they 
are met and conquered — not merely pushed aside for the 
time — depends our future. Out of the wisdom of the past, 
help us over the present. But no ! People can speak of 
Utopia much more easily than of the next day’s duty ; and 
yet when that duty is all done by others, who so ready to 
cry, * Fie, for shame ! ’ ” 

“ And all this time I don’t see what you are talking 
about. Would you Milton men condescend to send up your 
to-day’s difficulty to Oxford ? You have not tried us yet.” 

Mr. Thornton laughed outright.at this. “ I believe I was 
talking with reference to a good deal that has been troubling 
us of late; I was thinking of the strikes we have gone 
through, which are troublesome and injurious things enough, 
as I am finding to my cost. And yet this last strike, under 
which I am smarting, has been respectable.” 

“ A respectable strike ! ” said Mr. Bell. “ That sounds 
as if you were far gone in the worship of Thor.” 

Margaret felt, rather than saw, that Mr. Thornton was 
chagrined by the repeated turning into jest of what he was 
feeling as very serious. She tried to change the conversation 
from a subject about which one party cared little, while, to 
the other, it was deeply, because personally, interesting. 
She forced herself to say something. 

“ Edith says she finds the printed calicoes in Corfu better 
and cheaper than in London.” 

“ Does she ? ” said her father. “ I think that must be one 
of Edith’s exaggerations. Are you sure of it, Margaret ? ” 

“ I am sure she says so, papa.” 

“ Then I am sure of the fact,” said Mr. Bell. “ Margaret, 
I go so far in my idea of your truthfulness, that it shall 
cover your cousin’s character. I don’t believe a cousin of 
yours could exaggerate.” 

“ Is Miss Hale so remarkable for truth ? ” said Mr. 
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Thornton bitterly. The moment he had done so, he could 
have bitten his tongue out. What was he ? And why 
should he stab her with her shame in this way ? How evil 
he was to-night ; possessed by ill-humour at being detained 
so long from her ; irritated by the mention of some name, 
because he thought it belonged to a more successful lover ; 
now ill-tempered because he had been unable to cope, with 
a light heart, against one who was trying, by gay and 
careless speeches, to make the evening pass pleasantly 
away — the kind old friend to all parties, whose manner by 
this time might be well known to Mr. Thornton, who had 
been acquainted with him for many years. 

And then to speak to Margaret as he had done ! She 
did not get up and leave the room, as she had done in 
former days, when his abruptness or his temper had annoyed 
her. She sat quite still, after the first momentary glance of 
grieved surprise, that made her eyes look like some child’s 
who has met with an unexpected rebuff ; they slowly dilated 
into mournful, reproachful sadness ; and then they fell, and 
she bent over her work, and did not speak again. But he 
could not help looking at her, and he saw a sigh tremble 
over her body, as if she quivered in some unwonted chill. 
He felt as the mother would have done, in the midst of 
“ her rocking it, and rating it,” had she been called away 
before her slow confiding smile, implying perfect trust in 
mother’s love, had proved the renewing of its love. He 
gave short, sharp answers ; he was uneasy and cross, unable 
to discern between jest and earnest ; anxious only for a look, 
a word, of hers before which to prostrate himself in penitent 
humility. But she neither looked nor spoke. Her round 
taper fingers flew in and out of her sewing, as steadily and 
swiftly as if that were the business of her life. She could 
not care for him, he thought, or else the passionate fervour 
of his wish would have forced her to raise those eyes, if but 
for an instant, to read the late repentance in his. He could 
have struck her before he left, in order, that by some strange 
overt act of rudeness, he might earn the privilege of telling 

400 


Out of Tune 

her the remorse that gnawed at his heart. It was well that 
the long walk in the open air wound up this evening for 
him. It sobered him back into grave resolution, that hence- 
forth he would see as little of her as possible — since the 
very sight of that face and form, the very sounds of that 
voice (like the soft winds of pure melody) had such power 
to move him from his balance. Well ! He had known what 
love was— a sharp pang, a fierce experience, in the midst of 
whose flames he was struggling ! but through that furnace 
he would fight his way out into the serenity of middle age, 
— all the richer and more human for having known this 
great passion. 

When he had somewhat abruptly left the room, Margaret 
rose from her seat, and began silently to fold up her work. 
The long seams were heavy, and had an unusual weight 
for her languid arms. The round lines in her face took a 
lengthened, straighter form, and her whole appearance was 
that of one who had gone through a day of great fatigue. 
As the three prepared for bed, Mr. Bell muttered forth a 
little condemnation of Mr. Thornton. 

“ I never saw a fellow so spoiled by success. He can’t 
bear a word ; a jest of any kind. Everything seems to touch 
on the soreness of his high dignity. Formerly, he was as 
simple and noble as the open day ; you could not offend him, 
because he had no vanity.” 

“ He is not vain now,” said Margaret, turning round 
from the table, and speaking with quiet distinctness. “ To- 
night he has not been like himself. Something must have 
annoyed him before he came here.” 

Mr. Bell gave her one of his sharp glances from above 
his spectacles. She stood it quite calmly ; but, after she had 
left the room, he suddenly asked — 

“ Hale ! did it ever strike you that Thornton and your 
daughter have what the French call a tendresse for each 
other ? ” 

“ Never ! ” said Mr. Hale, first startled and then flurried 
by the new idea. “No, I am sure you are wrong. I am 

401 2 D 


North and South 

almost certain you are mistaken. If there is anything, it is 
all on Mr. Thornton’s side. Poor fellow ! I hope and trust 
he is not thinking of her, for I am sure she would not 
have him.” 

“ Well ! I’m a bachelor, and have steered clear of love 
affairs all my life ; so perhaps my opinion is not worth 
having. Or else I should say there were very pretty 
symptoms about her ! ” 

“ Then I am sure you are wrong,” said Mr. Hale. “ He 
may care for her, though she really has been almost rude 
to him at times. But she ! — why, Margaret would never 
think of him, I’m sure. Such a thing has never entered her 
head.” 

“ Entering her heart would do. But I merely threw out 
a suggestion of what might be. I dare say I was wrong. 
And whether I was wrong or right, I’m very sleepy; so, 
having disturbed your night’s rest (as I can see) with my 
untimely fancies, I’ll betake myself with an easy mind to 
my own.” 

But Mr. Hale resolved that he would not be disturbed by 
any such nonsensical idea; so he lay awake, determining 
not to think about it. 

Mr. Bell took his leave the next day, bidding Margaret 
look to him as one who had a right to help and protect her 
in all her troubles, of whatever nature they might be. To 
Mr. Hale he said — 

“ That Margaret of yours has gone deep into my heart. 
Take care of her, for she is a very precious creature — a 
great deal too good for Milton, — only fit for Oxford, in fact. 
The town, I mean ; not the men. I can’t match her yet. 
When I can, I shall bring my young man to stand side by 
side with your young woman, just as the genie in the 
Arabian Nights brought Prince Caralmazan to match with 
the fairy’s Princess Badoura.” 

“ I beg you’ll do no such thing. Remember the mis- 
fortunes that ensued ; and besides, I can’t spare Margaret.” 

“ No ; on second thoughts, we’ll have her to nurse us 
402 


Out of Tune 

ten years hence, when we shall be two cross old invalids. 
Seriously, Hale ! I wish you’d leave Milton ; which is a most 
unsuitable place for you, though it was my recommendation 
in the first instance. If you would, I’d swallow my shadows 
of doubts, and take a college living ; and you and Margaret 
should come and live at the parsonage— you to be a sort of 
lay curate, and take the unwashed off my hands ; and she 
to be our house-keeper — the village Lady Bountiful — by 
day; and read us to sleep in the evenings. I could be 
very happy in such a life. What do you think of it ? ” 

“ Never,” said Mr. Hale decidedly. “ My one great 
change has been made, and my price of suffering paid. 
Here I stay out my life ! and here will I be buried, and lost 
in the crowd.” 

“ I don’t give up my plan yet. Only I won’t bait you 
with it any more just now. Where’s the Pearl ? Come, 
Margaret, give me a farewell kiss ; and remember, my dear, 
where you may find a true friend, as far as his capability 
goes. You are my child, Margaret. Remember that, and 
God bless you ! ” 

So they fell back into the monotony of the quiet life they 
would henceforth lead. There was no invalid to hope and 
fear* about ; even the Higginses — so long a vivid interest 
— seemed to have receded from any need of immediate 
thought. The Boucher children, left motherless orphans, 
claimed what of Margaret’s care she could bestow ; and she 
went pretty often to see Mary Higgins, who had charge of 
them. The two families were living in one house; the 
elder children were at humble schools, the younger ones 
were tended, in Mary’s absence at her work, by the kind 
neighbour whose good sense had struck Margaret at the 
time of Boucher’s death. Of course she was paid for her 
trouble ; and indeed, in all his little plans and arrangements 
for these orphan children, Nicholas showed a sober judg- 
ment and a regulated method of thinking, which were at 
variance with his former more eccentric jerks of action. He 
was so steady at his work, that Margaret did not often see 

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North and South 

him during these winter months ; but, when she did, she saw 
that he winced away from any reference to the father 
of those children, whom he had so fully and heartily taken 
under his care. He did not speak easily of Mr. Thornton. 

“ To tell the truth,” said he, “ he fairly bamboozles me. 
He’s two chaps. One chap I knowed of old as were measter 
all o’er. T’other chap hasn’t an ounce of measter’s flesh 
about him. How them two chaps is bound up in one body, 
is a craddy for me to find out. I’ll not be beat by it, though. 
Meanwhile he comes here pretty often ; that’s how I know 
the chap that’s a man, not a measter. And I reckon he’s 
taken aback by me pretty much as I am by him ; for he sits 
and listens and stares, as if I were some strange beast newly 
caught in some of the zones. But I’m none daunted. It 
would take a deal to daunt me in my own house, as he 
sees. And I tell him some of my mind that I reckon 
he’d ha’ been the better of hearing when he were a younger 
man.” 

“ And does he not answer you ? ” asked Mr. Hale. 

“ Well ! I'll not say th’ advantage is all on his side, for 
all I take credit for improving him above a bit. Sometimes 
he says a rough thing or two, which is not agreeable to look 
at at first, but has a queer smack o’ truth in it when yo’ come 
to chew it. He’ll be coming to-night, T_ reckon, about them 
childer’s schooling. He’s not satisfied wi’ the make of it, 
and wants for t’ examine ’em.” 

“ What are they ” — began Mr. Hale ; but Margaret, 
touching his arm, showed him her watch. 

“It is nearly seven,” she said. “ The evenings are 
getting longer now. Come, papa.” She did not breathe 
freely till they were some distance from the house. Then, 
as she became more calm, she wished that she had not been 
in so great a hurry ; for, somehow, they saw Mr. Thornton 
but very seldom now; and he might have come to see 
Higgins, and for the old friendship’s sake she should like to 
have seen him to-night. 

Yes ! he came very seldom, even for the dull, cold purpose 
404 


Out of Tune 

of lessons. Mr. Hale was disappointed in his pupil’s luke- 
warmness about Greek literature, which had but a short time 
ago so great an interest for him. And now it often happened 
that a hurried note from Mr. Thornton would arrive, just at 
the last moment, saying that he was so much engaged that 
he could not come to read with Mr. Hale that evening. And 
though other pupils had taken more than his place as to 
time, no one was like his first scholar in Mr. Hale’s heart. 
He was depressed and sad at this partial cessation of an 
intercourse which had become dear to him ; and he used to 
sit pondering over the reason that could have occasioned this 
change. 

He startled Margaret one evening, as she sate at her 
work, by suddenly asking — 

“ Margaret ! had you ever any reason for thinking that 
Mr. Thornton cared for you ? ” 

He almost blushed as he put the question ; but Mr. Bell’s 
scouted idea recurred to him, and the words were out of his 
mouth before he well knew what he was about. 

Margaret did not answer immediately; but by the 
bent drooping of her head, he guessed what her reply 
would be. 

“ Yes ; I believe — oh, papa, I should have told you.” 
And she dropped her work, and hid her face in her 
hands. 

“ No, dear ; don’t think that I am impertinently curious. 
I am sure you would have told me if you had felt 
that you could return his regard. Did he speak to you 
about it ? ” 

No answer at first ; but by-and-by a little gentle reluctant 
“ Yes.” 

“ And you refused him ? ” 

A long sigh ; a more helpless, nerveless attitude ; and 
another “ Yes.” But, before her father could speak, Margaret 
lifted up her face, rosy with some beautiful shame, and, fixing 
her eyes upon him, said — 

“ Now, papa, I have told you this, and I cannot tell you 
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North and South 

more ; and then the whole thing is so painful to me ; every 
word and action connected with it is so unspeakably bitter, 
that I cannot bear to think of it. Oh, papa, I am sorry to 
have lost you this friend, but I could not help it — but oh ! I 
am very sorry.” She sate down on the ground, and laid her 
head on his knees. 

“ I too, am sorry, my dear. Mr. Bell quite startled me 
when he said, some idea of the kind ” 

“ Mr. Bell ! Oh, did Mr. Bell see it ? ” 

“A little; but he took it into his head that you — how 
shall I say it? — that you were not ungraciously disposed 
towards Mr. Thornton. I knew that could never be. I 
hoped the whole thing was but an imagination ; but I knew 
too well what your real feelings were to suppose that you 
could ever like Mr. Thornton in that way. But I am very 
sorry.” 

They were very quiet and still for some minutes. But, 
on stroking her cheek in a caressing way soon after, he 
was almost shocked to find her face wet with tears. As 
he touched her, she sprang up, and, smiling with forced 
brightness, began to talk of the Lennoxes with such a 
vehement desire to turn the conversation, that Mr. Hale 
was too tender-hearted to try to force it back into the 
old channel. 

“ To-morrow — yes, to-morrow they will be back at 
Harley Street. Oh, how strange it will be ! I wonder 
what room they will make into the nursery ? Aunt Shaw 
will be happy with the baby. Fancy Edith a mamma ! 
And Captain Lennox — I wonder what he will do with him- 
self now he has sold out ! ” 

“I’ll tell you what,” said her father, anxious to indulge 
her in this fresh subject of interest, “ I think I must spare 
you for a fortnight just to run up to town and see the 
travellers. You could learn more, by half-an-hour’s con- 
versation with Mr. Henry Lennox, about Frederick’s chances, 
than in a dozen of these letters of his ; so it would, in fact, 
be uniting business with pleasure.” 

406 


Out of Tune 

“ No, papa, yon cannot spare me, and, what’s more, 
I won’t be spared.” Then, after a pause, she added — “ I 
am losing hope sadly about Frederick ; he is letting us 
down gently, but I can see that Mr. Lennox himself has 
no hope of hunting up the witnesses under years and years 
of time. No,” said she, “ that bubble was very pretty, and 
very dear to our hearts ; but it has burst like many another, 
and we must console ourselves with being glad that Frederick 
is so happy, and with being a great deal to each other. So 
don’t offend me by talking of being able to spare me, papa, 
for I assure you you can’t.” 

But the idea of a change took root and germinated in 
Margaret’s heart, although not in the way in which her 
father proposed it at first. She began to consider how 
desirable something of the kind would be to her father, 
whose spirits, always feeble, now became too frequently 
depressed, and whose health, though he never complained, 
had been seriously affected by his wife’s illness and death. 
There were the regular hours of reading with his pupils; 
but that all giving and no receiving could no longer be 
called companionship, as in the old days when Mr. Thornton 
came to study under him. Margaret was conscious of the 
want under which he was suffering, unknown to himself : 
the want of a man’s intercourse with men. At Helstone 
there had been perpetual occasion for an interchange of 
visits with neighbouring clergymen ; and the poor labourers 
in the fields, or leisurely tramping home at eve, or tending 
their cattle in the forest, were always at liberty to speak or 
be spoken to. But in Milton every one was too busy for 
quiet speech, or any ripened intercourse of thought; what 
they said was about business, very present and actual ; and 
when the tension of mind relating to their daily affairs was 
over, they sank into fallow rest until next morning. The 
workman was not to be found after the day’s work was 
done ; he had gone away to some lecture, or some club, or 
some beer-shop, according to his degree of character. Mr. 
Hale thought of trying to deliver a course of lectures at 

407 


North and South 

some of the institutions, but he contemplated doing this 
so much as an effort of duty, and with so little of the 
genial impulse of love towards his work and its end, that 
Margaret was sure that it would not be well done until he 
could look upon it with some kind of zest. 


CHAPTER XLI 

THE JOURNEY’S END 

“ I see my way as birds their trackless way — 

I shall arrive ! what time, what circuit first, 

I ask not : but, unless God send His hail 
Or blinding fire-balls, sleet, or stifling snow, 

In some time — His good time — I shall arrive ; 

He guides me and the bird. In His good time ! ” 

Browning’s Paracelsus. 

So the winter was getting on, and the days were beginning 
to lengthen, without bringing with them any of the bright- 
ness of hope which usually accompanies the rays of a 
February sun. Mrs. Thornton had of course entirely ceased 
to come to the house. Mr. Thornton came occasionally ; but 
his visits were addressed to her father, and were confined to 
the study. Mr. Hale spoke of him as always the same ; 
indeed, the very rarity of their intercourse seemed to make 
Mr. Hale set only the higher value on it. And, from what 
Margaret could gather of what Mr. Thornton had said, there 
was nothing in the cessation of his visits which could arise 
from any umbrage or vexation. His business affairs had 
become complicated during the strike, and required closer 
attention than he had given to them last winter. Nay, 
Margaret could even discover that he spoke from time to 
time of her, and always, as far as she could learn, in the 
same calm friendly way, never avoiding and never seeking 
any mention of her name. 


408 


The Journey’s End 

She was not in spirits to raise her father’s tone of mind. 
The dreary peacefulness of the present time had been pre- 
ceded by so long a period of anxiety and care — even inter- 
mixed with storms — that her mind had lost its elasticity. 
She tried to find herself occupation in teaching the two 
younger Boucher children, and worked hard at goodness ; 
hard, I say most truly, for her heart seemed dead to the end 
of all her efforts ; and though she made them punctually and 
painfully, yet she stood as far off as ever from any cheerful- 
ness ; her life seemed still bleak and dreary. The only thing 
she did well, was what she did out of unconscious piety, the 
silent comforting and consoling of her father. Not a mood 
of his but found a ready sympathiser in Margaret ; not 
a wish of his that she did not strive to forecast, and to fulfil. 
They were quiet wishes to be sure, and hardly named 
without hesitation and apology. All the more complete and 
beautiful was her meek spirit of obedience. March brought 
the news of Frederick’s marriage. He and Dolores wrote; 
she in Spanish- English, as was but natural, and he with 
little turns and inversions of words, which proved how far 
the idioms of his bride’s country were infecting him. 

On the receipt of Henry Lennox’s letter, announcing how 
little hope there was of his ever clearing himself at a court- 
martial, in the absence of the missing witnesses, Frederick 
had written to Margaret a rather vehement letter, containing 
his renunciation of England as his country ; he wished he 
could un-native himself, and declared that he would not take 
his pardon if it were offered him, nor live in the country if 
he had permission to do so. All of which made Margaret 
cry sorely, so unnatural did it seem to her at the first open- 
ing ; but on consideration, she saw rather in such expression 
the poignancy of the disappointment which had thus crushed 
his hopes; and she felt that there was nothing for it but 
patience. In the next letter, Frederick spoke so joyfully of 
the future, that he had no thought for the past ; and Mar- 
garet found a use in herself for the patience she had been 
craving for him. She would have to be patient. But the 

409 


North and South 

pretty, timid, girlish letters of Dolores were beginning to 
have a charm for both Margaret and her father. The young 
Spaniard was so evidently anxious to make a favourable im- 
pression upon her lover’s English relations, that her feminine 
care peeped out at every erasure ; and the letters announcing 
the marriage were accompanied by a splendid black lace 
mantilla, chosen by Dolores herself for her unseen sister-in- 
law, whom Frederick had represented as a paragon of 
beauty, wisdom, and virtue. Frederick’s worldly position was 
raised by this marriage on to as high a level as they could 
desire'. Barbour & Co. was one of the most extensive 
Spanish houses, and into it he was received as a junior 
partner. Margaret smiled a little, and then sighed, as she 
remembered afresh her old tirades against trade. Here was 
her preux chevalier of a brother turned merchant, trader! 
But then she rebelled against herself, and protested silently 
against the confusion implied between a Spanish merchant 
and a Milton millowner. Well, trade or no trade, Frederick 
was very, very happy. Dolores must be charming, and 
the mantilla was exquisite ! And then she returned to the 
present life. 

Her father had occasionally experienced a difficulty in 
breathing this spring, which had for the time distressed him 
exceedingly. Margaret was less alarmed, as this difficulty 
went off completely in the intervals ; but she still was so 
desirous of his shaking off the liability altogether, as to make 
her very urgent that he should accept Mr. Bell’s invitation 
to visit him at Oxford this April. Mr. Bell’s invitation 
included Margaret. Nay more, he wrote a special letter 
commanding her to come ; but she felt as if it would be a 
greater relief to her to remain quietly at home, entirely free 
from any responsibility whatever, and so to rest her mind 
and heart in a manner which she had not been able to do for 
more than two years past. 

When her father had driven off on his way to the rail- 
road, Margaret felt how great and long had been the pressure 
on her time and her spirits. It was astonishing, almost 

410 


The Journey’s End 

stunning, to feel herself so much at liberty ; no one depend- 
ing on her for cheering care, if not for positive happiness ; 
no invalid to plan and think for; she might be idle, and 
silent, and forgetful — and, what seemed worth more than all 
the other privileges, she might be unhappy if she liked. 
For months past, all her own personal cares and troubles 
had had to be stuffed away into a dark cupboard ; but now 
she had leisure to take them out, and mourn over them, and 
study their nature, and seek the true method of subduing 
them into the elements of peace. All these weeks she had 
been conscious of their existence in a dull kind of way, 
though they were hidden out of sight. Now, once for all she 
would consider them, and appoint to each of them its right 
work in her life. So she sat almost motionless for hours in 
the drawing-room, going over the bitterness of every remem- 
brance with an unwincing resolution. Only once she cried 
aloud, at the stinging thought of the faithlessness which gave 
birth to that abasing falsehood. 

She now would not even acknowledge the force of the 
temptation ; her plans for Frederick had all failed, and the 
temptation lay there a dead mockery — a mockery which had 
never had life in it ; the he had been so despicably foolish, 
seen by the light of the ensuing events, and faith in the 
power of truth so infinitely the greater wisdom ! 

In her nervous agitation, she unconsciously opened a 
book of her father’s that lay upon the table, — the words that 
caught her eye in it, seemed almost made for her present 
state of acute self-abasement : — 

“ Je ne voudrois pas reprendre mon coeur en ceste sorte : 
meurtri de honte, aveugle, impudent, traistre et desloyal a ton 
Dieu, et semblables choses ; mais je voudrois le corriger par 
voye de compassion. Or sus, mon pauvre coeur, nous voila 
tombes dans la fosse, laquelle nous avions tant resolu 
d’eschapper. Ah ! reveillons-nous, et quittons-la pour jamais, 
reclamons la misericorde de Dieu, et esperons en elle 
qu’elle nous assistera pour desormais estre plus fermes; et 

411 


North and South 

remettons nous au chemin de l’humilite. Courage, soyons 
sur nos gardes, Dieu nous aydera.” 

“ The way of humility. Ah,” thought Margaret, “ that 
is what I have missed ! But courage, little heart. We will 
turn back, and by God’s help we may find the lost path.” 

So she rose up, and determined at once to set to on some 
work which should take her out of herself. To begin with, 
she called in Martha, as she passed the drawing-room door 
in going upstairs, and tried to find out what was below the 
grave, respectful, servant-like manner, which crusted over 
her individual character with an obedience that was almost 
mechanical. She found it difficult to induce Martha to speak 
of any of her personal interests ; but at last she touched 
the right chord, in naming Mrs. Thornton. Martha’s whole 
face brightened; and, on a little encouragement, out came 
a long story, of how her father had been in early life con- 
nected with Mrs. Thornton’s husband — nay, had even been 
in a position to show him some kindness ; what, Martha 
hardly knew, for it had happened when she was' quite a 
little child ; and circumstances had intervened to separate 
the two families until Martha was nearly grown up, when, 
her father having sunk lower and lower from his original 
occupation as a clerk in a warehouse, and her mother being 
dead, she and her sister, to use Martha’s own expression, 
would have been “ lost * but for Mrs. Thornton ; who sought 
them out, and thought for them, and cared for them. 

“ I had had the fever, and was but delicate ; and Mrs. 
Thornton, and Mr. Thornton too, they never rested till they 
had nursed me up in their own house, and sent me to the 
sea and all. The doctor said the fever was catching, but 
they cared none for that — only Miss Fanny, and she went 
a-visiting. these folk that she was going to marry into. So 
though she was afraid at the time, it has all ended well.” 

“ Miss Fanny going to be married ! ” exclaimed Margaret. 

“ Yes ; and to a rich gentleman, too, only he’s a deal 
older than she is. His name is Watson; and his mills are 

412 


The Journey’s End 

somewhere out beyond Hayleigh ; it’s a very good marriage, 
for all he’s got such grey hair.” 

At this piece of information, Margaret was silent long 
enough for Martha to recover her propriety, and, with it, her 
habitual shortness of answer. She swept up the hearth, 
asked at what time she should prepare tea, and quitted the 
room, with the same wooden face with which she had 
entered it. Margaret had to pull herself up from indulging 
a bad trick, which she had lately fallen into, of trying to 
imagine how every event that she heard of in relation to 
Mr. Thornton would affect him : whether he would like it or 
dislike it. 

The next day she had the little Boucher children for their 
lessons, and took a long walk, and ended by a visit to Mary 
Higgins. Somewhat to Margaret’s surprise, she found 
Nicholas already come home from his work ; the lengthening 
light had deceived her as to the lateness of the evening. He 
too seemed, by his manners, to have entered a little more on 
the way of humility ; he was quieter, and less self-asserting. 

“ So th’ oud gentleman’s away on his travels, is he ? ” 
said he. “ Little ’uns telled me so. Eh ! but they’re sharp 
’uns they are ; I a’ most think they beat my own wenches 
for sharpness, though m’appen it’s wrong to say so, and one 
on ’em in her grave. There’s summut in th’ weather, I 
reckon, as sets folk a- wandering. My measter, him at th’ 
shop yonder, is spinning about th’ world somewhere.” 

“ Is that the reason you’re so soon at home to-night ? ” 
asked Margaret innocently. 

“ Thou know’st nought about it, that’s all,” said he con- 
temptuously. “ I’m not one wi’ two faces — one for my 
measter, and t’other for his back. I counted a’ th’ clocks 
in the town striking afore I’d leave my work. No! yon 
Thornton’s good enough for to fight wi’, but too good for 
to be cheated. It were you as getten me the place, and I 
thank yo’ for it. Thornton’s is not a bad mill, as times go. 
Stand down, lad, and say yo’r pretty hymn to Miss Marget. 
That’s right; steady on thy legs, and right arm out as 

4i3 


North and South 

straight as a skewer. One to stop, two to stay, three mak’ 
ready, and four away ! ” 

The little fellow repeated a Methodist hymn, far above 
his comprehension in point of language, but of which the 
swinging rhythm had caught his ear, and which he repeated 
with all the developed cadence of a member of Parliament. 
When Margaret had duly applauded, Nicholas called for 
another, and yet another, much to her surprise, as she found 
him thus oddly and unconsciously led to take an interest in 
the sacred things which he had formerly scouted. 

It was past the usual tea-time when she reached home ; 
but she had the comfort of feeling that no one had been kept 
waiting for her; and of thinking her own thoughts while 
she rested, instead of anxiously watching another person to 
learn whether to be grave or gay. After tea she resolved -to 
examine a large packet of letters, and pick out those that 
were to be destroyed. 

Among them she came to four or five of Mr. Henry 
Lennox’s, relating to Frederick’s affairs ; and she carefully 
read them over again, with the sole intention, when she 
began, to ascertain exactly on how fine a chance the justifica- 
tion of her brother hung. But when she had finished the 
last, and weighed the pros and cons, the little personal 
revelation of character contained in them forced itself on her 
notice. It was evident enough, from the stiffness of the 
wording, that Mr. Lennox had never forgotten his relation 
to her in any interest he might feel in the subject of the 
correspondence. They were clever letters ; Margaret saw 
that in a twinkling; but she missed out of them all hearty 
and genial atmosphere. They were to be preserved, how- 
ever, as valuable ; so she laid them carefully on one side. 

When this little piece of business was ended, she fell into 
a reverie ; and the thought of her absent father ran strangely 
in Margaret’s head this night. She almost blamed herself 
for having felt her solitude (and consequently his absence) 
as a relief ; but these two days had set her up afresh, with 
new strength and brighter hope. Plans which had lately 

414 


The Journey’s End 

appeared to her in the gnise of tasks now appeared like 
pleasures. The morbid scales had fallen from her eyes, and 
she saw her position and her work more truly. If only Mr. 
Thornton would restore her the lost friendship — nay, if he 
would only come from time to time to cheer her father as in 
former days — though she should never see him, she felt as 
if the course of her future life, though not brilliant in 
prospect, might lie clear and even before her. She sighed 
as she rose up to go to bed. In spite of the “ One step’s 
enough for me ” — in spite of the one plain duty of devotion 
to her father — there lay at her heart an anxiety and a pang 
of sorrow. 

And Mr. Hale thought of Margaret, that April evening, 
just as strangely and as persistently as she was thinking of 
him. He had been fatigued by going about among his old 
friends and old familiar places. He had had exaggerated 
ideas of the change which his altered opinions might make 
in his friends’ reception of him ; but although some of them 
might have felt shocked or grieved, or indignant at his 
falling off in the abstract, as soon as they saw the face of 
the man whom they had once loved, they forgot his opinions 
in himself ; or only remembered them enough to give an 
additional tender gravity to their manner. For Mr. Hale 
had not been known to many ; he had belonged to one of 
the smaller colleges, and had always been shy and reserved ; 
but those who in youth had cared to penetrate to the delicacy 
of thought and feeling that lay below his silence and in- 
decision, took him to their hearts, with something of the 
protecting kindness which they would have shown to a 
woman. And the renewal of this kindliness, after the lapse 
of years, and an interval of so much change, overpowered 
him more than any roughness or expression of disapproval 
could have done. 

“ I’m afraid we’ve done too much,” said Mr. Bell. 
“ You’re suffering now from having lived so long in that 
Milton air.” 

“ I am tired,” said Mr. Hale. “ But it is not Milton air. 

415 


North and South 

I’m fifty-five years of age, and that little fact of itself 
accounts for any loss of strength.” 

“ Nonsense ! I’m upwards of sixty, and feel no loss of 
strength, either bodily or mental. Don’t let me hear you 
talking so. Fifty-five ! why, you’re quite a young man.” 

Mr. Hale shook his head. “ These last few years ! ” said 
he. But after a minute’s pause, he raised himself from his 
half-recumbent position, in one of Mr. Bell’s luxurious easy- 
chairs, and said with a kind of trembling earnestness — 

* “ Bell !. you’re not to think, that if I could have foreseen 
all that would come of my change of opinion, and my 
resignation of my living — no ! not even if I could have 
known how she would have suffered — that I would undo it — 
the act of open acknowledgment that I no longer held the 
same faith as the Church in which I was a priest. As I 
think now, even if I could have foreseen that cruellest 
martyrdom of suffering, through the sufferings of one whom 
I loved, I would have done just the same as far as that step 
of openly leaving the Church went. I might have done 
differently, and acted more wisely, in all that I subsequently 
did for my family. But I don’t think God endued me with 
over-much wisdom or strength,” he added, falling back into 
his old position. 

Mr. Bell blew his nose ostentatiously before answering. 
Then he said — 

“ He gave you strength to do what your conscience told 
you was right ; and I don’t see that we heed any higher or 
holier strength than that ; or wisdom either. I know I have 
not that much ; and yet men set me down in their fool’s 
books as a wise man; an independent character; strong- 
minded, and all that cant. The veriest idiot who obeys his 
own simple law of right, if it be but in wiping his shoes on 
a door-mat, is wiser and stronger than I. But what gulls 
men are ! ” 

There was a pause. Mr. Hale spoke first, in continuation 
of his thought — 

“ About Margaret.” 


416 


The Journey’s End 

“Well ! about Margaret. What then ? ” 

“If Idle” 

“ Nonsense ! ” 

“ What will become of her — I often think. I suppose 
the Lennoxes will ask her to live with them. I try to think 
they will. Her Aunt Shaw loved her well in her own quiet 
way; but she forgets to love the absent.” 

“ A very common fault. What sort of people are the 
Lennoxes ? ” 

“ He, handsome, fluent, and agreeable. Edith, a sweet 
little spoiled beauty. Margaret loves her with all her heart, 
and Edith her with as much of her heart as she can spare.” 

“ Now, Hale ; you know that girl of yours has got pretty 
nearly all my heart. I told you that before. Of course, as 
your daughter, as my god-daughter, I took great interest in 
her before I saw her the last time. But this visit that I paid 
to you at Milton made me her slave. I went, a willing old 
victim, following the car of the conqueror. For, indeed, she 
looks as grand and serene as one who has struggled, and may 
be struggling, and yet has the victory secure in sight. Yes, 
in spite of all her present anxieties, that was the look on her 
face. And so, all I have is at her service, if she needs it ; 
and will be hers, whether she will or no, when I die. More- 
over, I myself, will be her preux chevalier, sixty and gouty 
though I be. Seriously, old friend, your daughter shall be 
my principal charge in life, and all the help that either my 
wit or my wisdom or my willing heart can give, shall be hers. 
I don’t choose her out as a subject for fretting. Something, 
I know of old, you must have to worry yourself abdut, or you 
wouldn’t be happy. But you’re going to outlive me by many 
a long year. You spare thin men are always tempting and 
always cheating Death ! It’s the stout, florid fellows like me, 
that always go off first.” 

If Mr. Bell had had a prophetic eye he might have seen 
the torch all but inverted, and the angel with the grave and 
composed face standing very nigh, beckoning to his friend. 
That night Mr. Hale laid his head down on the pillow on 

417 2 E 


North and South 

which it never more should stir with life. The servant who 
entered his room in the morning, received no answer to his 
speech ; drew near the bed, and saw the calm, beautiful face 
lying white and cold under the ineffaceable seal of death. 
The attitude was exquisitely easy ; there had been no pain — 
no struggle. The action of the heart must have ceased as he 
lay down. 

Mr. Bell was stunned by the shock ; and only recovered 
when the time came for being angry at every suggestion of 
his man’s. 

“ A coroner’s inquest ? Pooh. You don’t think I poisoned 
him ! Dr. Forbes says it is just the natural end of a heart 
complaint. Poor old Hale ! You wore out that tender heart 
of yours before its time. Poor old friend ! How he talked 
of his — - — Wallis, pack up a carpet-bag for me in five 
minutes. Here have I been talking. Pack it up, I say. I 
must go to Milton by the next train.” 

The bag was packed, the cab ordered, the railway reached 
in twenty minutes from the time of this decision. The 
London train whizzed by, drew back some yards, and in Mr, 
Bell was hurried by the impatient guard. He threw himself 
back in his seat, to try, with closed eyes, to understand how 
one in life yesterday could be dead to-day ; and shortly tears 
stole out between his grizzled eye-lashes, at the feeling of 
which he opened his keen eyes and looked as severely cheer- 
ful as his set determination could make him. He was not 
going to blubber before a set of strangers. Not he ! 

There was no set of strangers, only one sitting far from 
him on the same side. By-and-by Mr. Bell peered at him, 
to discover what manner of man it was that might have been 
observing his emotion; and behind the great sheet of the 
outspread Times , he recognised Mr. Thornton. 

“ Why, Thornton ! is that you ? ” said he, removing hastily 
to a closer proximity. He shook Mr. Thornton vehemently 
by the hand, until the grip ended in a sudden relaxation, for 
the hand was wanted to wipe away tears. He had last seen 
Mr. Thornton in his friend Hale’s company. 

418 


The Journey’s End 

“ I’m going to Milton, bound on a melancholy errand. 
Going to break to Hale’s daughter the news of his sudden 
death ! ” 

“ Death ! Mr. Hale dead ! ” 

“ Ay ; I keep saying it to myself, * Hale is dead ! ’ but it 
doesn’t make it any the more real. Hale is dead for all that. 
He went to bed well, to all appearance, last night, and was 
quite cold this morning when my servant went to call 
him.” 

“ Where ? I don’t understand ! ” 

“ At Oxford. He came to stay with me ; hadn’t been in 
Oxford this seventeen years— and this is the end of it.” 

Not one word was spoken for above a quarter of an hour. 
Then Mr. Thornton said — 

“ And she ! ” and stopped full short. 

“ Margaret, you mean. Yes ! I am going to tell her. 
Poor fellow ! How full his thoughts were of her all last 
night ! Good God. Last night only. And how immeasur- 
ably distant he is now ! But I take Margaret as my child 
for his sake. I said last night I would take her for her own 
sake. Well, I take her for both.” 

Mr. Thornton made one or two fruitless attempts to 
speak, before he could get out the words — 

“ What will become of her ? ” 

“ I rather fancy there will be two people waiting for her : 
myself for one. I would take a live dragon into my house 
to live, if, by hiring such a chaperon, and setting up an 
establishment of my own, I could make my old age happy 
with having Margaret for a daughter. But there are those 
Lennoxes ! ” 

“ Who are they ? ” asked Mr. Thornton with trembling 
interest. 

“ Oh, smart London people, who very likely will think 
they’ve the best right to her. Captain Lennox married her 
cousin — the girl she was brought up with. Good enough 
people, I dare say. And there’s her aunt, Mrs. Shaw. 
There might be a way open, perhaps, by my offering to 

419 


North and South 

marry that worthy lady ! but that would be quite a pis aller. 
And then there’s that brother ! ” 

“ What brother ? A brother of her aunt’s ? ” 

“ No, no ; a clever Lennox (the captain’s a fool, you must 
understand) ; a young barrister who will be setting his cap 
at Margaret. I know he has had her in his mind this five 
years or more ; one of his chums told me as much ; and he 
was only kept back by her want of fortune. Now that will 
be done away with.” 

“How?” asked Mr. Thornton, too earnestly curious to 
be aware of the impertinence of his question. 

“ Why, she’ll have my money at my death. And if this 
Henry Lennox is half good enough for her, and she likes 
him— well! I might find another way of getting a home 
through a marriage. I’m dreadfully afraid of being tempted, 
at an unguarded moment, by the aunt.” 

Neither Mr. Bell nor Mr. Thornton was in a laughing 
humour; so the oddity of any of the' speeches which the 
former made was unnoticed by them. Mr. Bell whistled, 
without emitting any sound beyond a long hissing breath ; 
changed his seat, without finding comfort or rest; while 
Mr. Thornton sat immovably still, his eyes fixed on one spot 
in the newspaper, which he had taken up in order to give 
himself leisure to think. 

“ Where have you been ? ” asked Mr. Bell at length. 

“ To Havre. Trying to detect the secret of the great rise 
in the price of cotton.” 

“ Ugh ! Cotton, and speculations, and smoke, well- 
cleansed and well- cared- for machinery, and unwashed and 
neglected hands. Poor old Hale ! Poor old Hale ! If you 
could have known the change which it was to him from 
Helstone. Do you know the New Forest at all ? ” 

“ Yes.” (Very shortly.) 

“ Then you can fancy the difference between it and 
Milton. What part were you in? Were you ever at 
Helstone? a little picturesque village, like some in the 
Odenwald ? You know Helstone ? ” 


420 


Alone ! Alone ! 

“ I have seen it. It was a great change to leave it and 
come to Milton.” 

He took up his newspaper with a determined air, as if 
resolved to avoid further conversation; and Mr. Bell was 
fain to resort to his former occupation of trying to find out 
how he could best break the news to Margaret. 

She was at an upstairs window; she saw him alight; 
she guessed the truth with an instinctive flash. She stood 
in the middle of the drawing-room, as if arrested in her first 
impulse to rush downstairs, and as if • by the same restrain- 
ing thought she had been turned to stone ; so white and 
immovable was she. 

“ Oh ! don’t tell me ! I know it from your face ! You 
would have sent — you would not have left him — if he were 
alive ! Oh, papa, papa ! ” 


CHAPTER XLII 

ALONE ! ALONE ! 

“ When some beloved voice that was to you 
Both sound and sweetness, faileth suddenly, 

And silence, against which you dare not cry, 

Aches round you like a strong disease and new — 

What hope ? what help ? what music will undo 
That silence to your sense ? ” 

Mrs. Browning. 

The shock had been great. Margaret fell into a state of 
prostration, which did not show itself in sobs and tears, or 
even find the relief of words. She lay on the sofa with her 
eyes shut, never speaking but when spoken to, and then 
replying in whispers. Mr. Bell was perplexed. He dared 
not leave her ; he dared not ask her to accompany him back 
to Oxford, which had been one of the plans he had formed 
on the journey to Milton, her physical exhaustion was 

421 


North and South 

evidently too complete for her to undertake any such fatigue 
— putting the sight that she would have to encounter out of 
the question. Mr. Bell sate over the fire, considering what 
he had better do. Margaret lay motionless, and almost 
breathless, by him. He would not leave her, even for the 
dinner which Dixon had prepared for him downstairs and, 
with sobbing hospitality, would fain have tempted him to 
eat. He had a plateful of something brought up to him. In 
general, he was particular and dainty enough, and knew well 
each shade of flavour in his food, but now the devilled chicken 
tasted like sawdust. He minced up some of the fowl for 
Margaret, and peppered and salted it well ; but when Dixon, 
following his directions, tried to feed her, the languid shake 
of head proved that in such a state as Margaret was in, food 
would only choke, not nourish her. 

Mr. Bell gave a great sigh ; lifted up his stout old limbs 
(stiff with travelling) from their easy position, and followed 
Dixon out of the room. 

“ I can’t leave her. I must write to them at Oxford, to 
see that the preparations are made : they can be getting on 
with these till I arrive. Can’t Mrs. Lennox come to her ? 
I’ll write and tell her she must. The girl must have some 
woman-friend about her, if only to talk her into a good fit of 
crying.” 

Dixon was crying — enough for two ; but, after wiping her 
eyes and steadying her voice, she managed to tell Mr. Bell 
that Mrs. Lennox was too near her confinement to be able 
to undertake any journey at present. 

“ Well ! I suppose we must have Mrs. Shaw ; she’s come 
back to England, isn’t she ? ” 

“ Yes, sir, she’s come back ; but I don’t think she will 
like to leave Mrs. Lennox at such an interesting time,” said 
Dixon, who did not much approve of a stranger entering the 
household, to share with her in her ruling care of Margaret. 

“ Interesting time be ” Mr. Bell restricted himself 

to coughing over the end of his sentence. “ She could be 
content to be at Venice or Naples, or some of those Popish 

422 


Alone ! Alone ! 

places, at the last ‘ interesting time,’ which took place in 
Corfu, I think. And what does that little prosperous woman’s 
* interesting time ’ signify, in comparison with that poor crea- 
ture there — that helpless, homeless, friendless Margaret — 
lying as still on that sofa as if it were an altar-tomb, and she 
the stone statue on it. I tell you, Mrs. Shaw shall come. 
See that a room, or whatever she wants, is got ready for her 
by to-morrow night. I’ll take care she comes.” 

Accordingly, Mr. Bell wrote a letter, which Mrs. Shaw 
declared, with many tears, to be so like one of the dear 
general’s when he was going to have a fit of the gout, that 
she should always value and preserve it. If he had given 
her the option, by requesting or urging her, as if a refusal 
were possible, she might not have come — true and sincere as 
was her sympathy with Margaret. It needed the sharp, 
uncourteous command to make her conquer her vis inertiae, 
and allow herself to be packed by her maid, after the latter 
had completed the boxes. Edith, all cap, shawl, and tears, 
came out to the top of the stairs, as Captain Lennox was 
taking her mother down to the carriage — 

“ Don’t forget, mamma ; Margaret must come and live 
with us. Sholto will go to Oxford on Wednesday, and you 
must send word by Mr. Bell to him when we’re to expect N 
you. And if you want Sholto, he can go on from Oxford 
to Milton. Don’t forget, mamma ; you are to bring back 
Margaret.” 

Edith re-entered the drawing-room. Mr. Henry Lennox 
was there, cutting open the pages of a new Review. With- 
out lifting his head, he said, “ If you don’t like Sholto to be 
so long absent from you, Edith, I hope you will let me go 
down to Milton, and give what assistance I can.” 

“ Oh, thank you,” said Edith, “ I dare say old Mr. Bell 
will do everything he can, and more help may not be 
needed. Only one does not look for much savoir faire from 
a resident Fellow. Dear, darling Margaret ; won’t it be 
nice to have her here, again ? You were both great allies, 
years ago.” 


423 


North and South 

“ Were we?” asked he indifferently, with an appearance 
of being interested in a passage in the Review. 

“ Well, perhaps not — I forget. I was so full of Sholto. 
But doesn’t it fall out well that, if my uncle was to die, it 
should be just now, when we are come home, and settled in 
the old house, and quite ready to receive Margaret ? Poor 
thing, what a change it will be to her from Milton ! I’ll have 
new chintz for her bed-room, and make it look new and 
bright, and cheer her up a little.” 

In the same spirit of kindness, Mrs. Shaw journeyed to 
Milton, occasionally dreading the first meeting, and won- 
dering how it would be got over; but more frequently 
planning how soon she could get Margaret away from “ that 
horrid place,” and back into the pleasant comforts of Harley 
Street. 

“ Oh dear ! ” she said to her maid ; “ look at those chim- 
neys ! My poor sister Hale ! I don’t think I could have 
rested at Naples if I had known what it was ! I must have 
come and fetched her and Margaret away.” And to herself 
she acknowledged, that she had always thought her brother- 
in-law rather a weak man, but never so weak as now, when 
she saw for what a place he had exchanged the lovely 
Helstone home. 

Margaret had remained in the same state ; white, motion- 
less, speechless, tearless. They had told her that her Aunt 
Shaw was coming; but she had not expressed either 
surprise or pleasure, or dislike to the idea. Mr. Bell, whose 
appetite had returned, and who appreciated Dixon’s endea- 
vours to gratify it, in vain urged upon her to taste some 
sweetbreads stewed with oysters ; she shook her head with 
the same quiet obstinacy as on the previous day ; and he was 
obliged to console himself for her rejection, by eating them 
all himself. But Margaret was the first to hear the stopping 
of the cab that brought her aunt from the railway station. 
Her eyelids quivered, her bps coloured and trembled. Mr. 
Bell went down to meet Mrs. Shaw ; and when they came 
up, Margaret was standing, trying to steady her dizzy self ; 

424 


Alone ! Alone ! 

and when the saw her aunt, she went forward to the arms 
open to receive her, and first found the passionate relief of 
tears on her aunt’s shoulder. All thoughts of quiet, habitual 
love, of tenderness for years, of relationship to the dead — all 
that inexplicable likeness in look, tone, and gesture, that 
seem to belong to one family, and which reminded Margaret 
so forcibly at this moment of her mother — came in to melt 
and soften her numbed heart into the overflow of warm 
tears. 

Mr. Bell stole out of the room, and went down into the 
study, where he ordered a fire, and tried to divert his 
thoughts by taking down and examining the different books. 
Each volume brought a remembrance or a suggestion of his 
dead friend. It might be a change of employment from his 
two days’ work of watching Margaret, but it was no change 
of thought. He was glad to catch the sound of Mr. Thornton’s 
voice, making inquiry at the door. Dixon was rather cava- 
lierly dismissing him ; for with the appearance of Mrs. Shaw’s 
maid came visions of former grandeur, of the Beresford 
blood, of the “ station ” (so she was pleased to term it) from 
which her young lady had been ousted, and to which she 
4 now, please God, to be restored. These visions, which 
s ie had been dwelling on with complacency in her conversa- 
tioi with Mrs. Shaw’s maid (skilfully eliciting meanwhile all 
the circumstances of state and consequence connected with 
hi Harley Street establishment, for the edification of the 
\ m n g Martha), made Dixon rather inclined to be super- 
. us in her treatment of any inhabitant of Milton; so, 
mough she always stood rather in awe of Mr. Thornton, she 
was as curt as she durst be in telling him that he could see 
nm e of the inmates of the house that night. It was rather 
unc imfortable to be contradicted in her statement by Mr. 
L r -l!’s opening the study door, and calling out — 

“ Thornton ! is that you ? Come in for a minute or two ; 
I want to speak to you.” So Mr. Thornton went into the 
study, and Dixon had to retreat into the kitchen, and 
reinstate herself in her own esteem by a prodigious story 

425 


North and South 

of Sir John Beresford’s coach and six, when he was high 
sheriff. 

“ I don’t know what I wanted to say to you after all. 
Only it’s dull enough to sit in a room where everything 
speaks to you of a dead friend. Yet Margaret and her aunt 
must have the drawing-room to themselves ! ” 

“ Is Mrs. — is her aunt come ? ” asked Mr. Thornton. 

“ Come ? Yes ; maid and all. One would have thought 
she might have come by herself at such a time ! And now 
I shall have to turn out and find my way to the Clarendon.” 

“ You must not go to the Clarendon. We have five or 
six empty bed-rooms at home.” 

“ Well aired ? ” 

“ I think you may trust my mother for that.” 

“ Then I’ll only run upstairs and wish that wan girl 
good night, and make my bow to her aunt, and go off with 
you straight.” 

Mr. Bell was some time upstairs. Mr. Thornton began 
to think it long, for he was full of business, and had hardly 
been able to spare the time for running up to Crampton, and 
inquiring how Miss Hale was. 

When they had set out upon their walk, Mr. Bell said — 

“ I was kept by those women in the drawing-room. 
Mrs. Shaw is anxious to get home — on account of her 
daughter, she says — and wants Margaret to go off with her 
at once. Now she is no more fit for travelling than I am for 
flying. Besides, she says, and very justly, that she'' ^as 
friends she must see — that she must wish good-bye to seveiq 
people ; and then her aunt worried her about old claims, ana 
was she forgetful of old friends ? And she said, with a great 
burst of crying, she should be glad enough to go from a place 
where she had suffered so much. Now I must return to 
Oxford to-morrow, and I don’t know on which side of the 
scale to throw in my voice.” 

He paused, as if asking a question ; but he received no 
answer from his companion, the echo of whose thoughts kept 
repeating — ■ 


426 


Alone ! Alone ! 

“ Where she had suffered so much.” Alas ! and that 
was the way in which this eighteen months in Milton — to 
him so unspeakably precious, down to its very bitterness, 
which was worth all the rest of life’s sweetness — would be 
remembered. Neither loss of father, nor loss of mother, dear 
as she was to Mr. Thornton, could have poisoned the remem- 
brance of the weeks, the days, the hours, when a walk of 
two miles, every step of which was pleasant, as it brought 
him nearer and nearer to her, took him to her sweet pre- 
sence — every step of which was rich, as each recurring 
moment that bore him away from her made him recall some 
fresh grace in her demeanour, or pleasant pungency in her 
character. Yes ! whatever had happened to him, external 
to his relation to her, he could never have spoken of that 
time, when he could have seen her every day — when he had 
her within his grasp, as it were — as a time of suffering. It 
had been a royal time of luxury to him, with all its stings 
and contumelies, compared to the poverty that crept round 
and clipped the anticipation of the future down to sordid fact 
and life without an atmosphere of either hope or fear. 

Mrs. Thornton and Fanny were in the dining-room ; the 
latter in a flutter of small exultation, as the maid held up 
one glossy material after another, to try the effect of the 
wedding-dresses by candlelight. Her mother really tried to 
sympathise with her, but could not. Neither taste nor dress 
were in her line of subjects, and she heartily wished that 
Fanny had accepted her brother’s offer of having the wedding 
clothes provided by some first-rate London dressmaker, 
without the endless, troublesome discussions, and unsettled 
wavering, that arose out of Fanny’s desire to choose and super- 
intend everything herself. Mr. Thornton was only too glad 
to mark his grateful approbation of any sensible man, who 
could be captivated by Fanny’s second-rate airs and graces, 
by giving her ample means for providing herself with the 
finery which certainly rivalled, if it did not exceed, the lover 
in her estimation. When her brother and Mr. Bell came in, 
Fanny blushed and simpered, and fluttered over the signs of 

427 


North and South 

her employment, in a way which could not have failed to 
draw attention from any one else but Mr. Bell. If he 
thought about her and her silks and satins at all, it was to 
compare her and them with the pale sorrow he had left 
behind him, sitting motionless, with bent head and folded 
hands, in a room where the stillness was so great that you 
might almost fancy the rush in your straining ears was 
occasioned by the spirits of the dead, yet hovering round 
their beloved. For, when Mr. Bell had first gone upstairs, 
Mrs. Shaw lay asleep on the sofa ; and no sound broke the 
silence. 

Mrs. Thornton gave Mr. Bell her formal; hospitable wel- 
come. She was never so gracious as when receiving her 
son’s friends in her son’s house ; and the more unexpected 
they were, the more honour to her admirable housekeeping 
preparations for comfort. 

“ How is Miss Hale ? ” she asked. 

“ About as broken down by this last stroke as she can 
be.” 

"I am sure it is very well for her that she has such 
a friend as you.” 

“ I wish I were her only friend, madam. I dare say it 
sounds very brutal; but here have I been displaced, and 
turned out of my post of comforter and adviser by a fine 
lady aunt ; and there are cousins and what not claiming her 
in London, as if she were a lap-dog belonging to them. And 
she is too weak and miserable to have a will of her own.” 

“ She must indeed be weak,” said Mrs. Thornton, with 
an implied meaning which her son understood well. “ But 
where,” continued Mrs. Thornton, “ have these relations been 
all this time that Miss Hale has appeared almost friendless, 
and has certainly had a good deal of anxiety to bear ? ” But 
she did not feel interest enough in the answer to her question 
to wait for it. She left the room to make her household 
arrangements. 

“ They have been living abroad. They have some kind 
of claim upon her. I will do them that justice. The aunt 

428 


Alone ! Alone ! 

brought her up, and she and the cousin have been like sisters. 
The thing vexing me, you see, is that I wanted to take her 
for a child of my own ; and I am jealous of these people, 
who don’t seem to value the privilege of their right. Now it 
would be different if Frederick claimed her.” 

“ Frederick ! ” exclaimed Mr. Thornton. “ Who is he ? 

What right ” He stopped short in his vehement 

question. 

“ Frederick ! ” said Mr. Bell in surprise. “ Why, don’t 
you know ? He’s her brother. Have you not heard 

“ I never heard his name before. Where is he ? Who 
is he ? ” 

“ Surely I told you about him, when the family first came 
to Milton — the son who was concerned in that mutiny.” 

“ I never heard of him till this moment. Where does he 
live?” 

“ In Spain. He’s liable to be arrested the moment he 
sets foot on English ground. Poor fellow ! He will grieve 
at not being able to attend his father’s funeral. We must be 
content with Captain Lennox ; for I don’t know of any other 
relation to summon.” 

“ I hope I may be allowed to go ? ” 

“Certainly; thankfully. You’re a good fellow, after all, 
Thornton. Hale liked you. He spoke to me, only the other 
day, about you at Oxford. He regretted he had seen so little 
of you lately. I am obliged to you for wishing to show him 
respect.” 

“ But about Frederick. Does he never come to England ? ” 

“ Never.” 

“ He was not over here about the time of Mrs. Hale’s 
death ? ” 

“ No. Why, I was here then. I hadn’t seen Hale for 

years and years : and, if you remember, I came No, it 

was some time after that that I came. But poor Frederick 
Hale was not here then. What made you think he was ? ” 

“ I saw a young man walking with Miss Hale one day,” 
replied Mr. Thornton, “ and I think it was about that time.” 

429 


North and South 

“ Oh, that would be this young Lennox, the Captain’s 
brother. He’s a lawyer, and they were in pretty constant 
correspondence with him ; and I remember Mr. Hale told 
me he thought he would come down. Do you know,” said 
Mr. Bell, wheeling round, and shutting one eye, the better to 
bring the forces of the other to bear with keen scrutiny on 
Mr. Thornton’s face, “ that I once fancied you had a little 
tenderness for Margaret ? ” 

No answer. No change of countenance. 

“ And so did poor Hale. Not at first, and not till 1 had 
put it into his head.” 

“ I admired Miss Hale. Every one must do so. She is 
a beautiful creature,” said Mr. Thornton, driven to bay by 
Mr. Bell’s pertinacious questioning. 

“Is that all! You can speak of her in that measured 
way, as simply a ‘ beautiful creature ’ — only something to 
catch the eye. I did hope you had had nobleness enough in 
you to make you pay her the homage of the heart. Though 
I believe — in fact I know, she would have rejected you, still 
to have loved her without return would have lifted you higher 
than all those, be they who they may, that have ever known 
her to love. ‘ Beautiful creature ’ indeed ! Do you speak of 
her as you would of a horse or a dog ? ” 

Mr. Thornton’s eyes glowed like red embers. 

“ Mr. Bell,” said he, “ before you speak so, you should 
remember that all men are not as free to express what they 
feel as you are. Let us talk of something else.” For though 
his heart leaped up, as at a trumpet-call, to every word that 
Mr. Bell had said, and though he knew that what he had said 
would henceforward bind the thought of the old Oxford Fellow 
closely up with the most precious things of his heart, yet he 
would not be forced into any expression of what he felt 
towards Margaret. He was no mocking-bird of praise to try, 
because another extolled what he reverenced and passionately 
loved, to outdo him in laudation. So he turned to some of 
the dry matters of business that lay between Mr. Bell and 
him, as landlord and tenant. 


430 


Alone ! Alone ! 

“ What is that heap of brick and mortar we came against 
in the yard ? Any repairs wanted ? ” 

“No, none, thank you.” 

“Are you building on your own account? If you are, 
I’m very much obliged to you.” 

“ I’m building a dining-room — for the men, I mean — the 
hands.” 

“ I thought you were hard to please, if this room wasn’t 
good enough to satisfy you, a bachelor.” 

“ I’ve got acquainted with a strange kind of chap, and I 
put one or two children in whom he is interested to school. 
So, as I happened to be passing near his house one day, I 
just went there about some trifling payment to be made ; and 
I saw such a miserable black frizzle of a dinner — a greasy 
cinder of meat, as first set me a-thinking. But it was not till 
provisions grew so high this winter that I bethought me how, 
by buying things wholesale, and cooking a good quantity of 
provisions together, much money might be saved, and much 
comfort gained. So I spoke to my friend — or my enemy — 
the man I told you of — and he found fault with every detail 
of my plan ; and in consequence I laid it aside, both as im- 
practicable, and also because if I forced it into operation I 
should be interfering with the independence of my men ; 
when, suddenly, this Higgins came to me and graciously 
signified his approval of a scheme so nearly the same as 
mine, that I might fairly have claimed it ; and, moreover, the 
approval of several of his fellow- workmen, to whom he had 
spoken. I was a little ‘ riled,’ I confess, by his manner, and 
thought of throwing the whole thing overboard to sink or 
swim. But it seemed childish to relinquish a plan which I 
had once thought wise and well laid, just because I myself 
did not. receive all the honour and consequence due to the 
originator. So I coolly took the part assigned to me, which 
is something like that of steward to a club. I buy in the 
provisions wholesale, and provide a fitting matron or 
cook.” 

“ I hope you give satisfaction in your new capacity. Are 
43 * 


North and South 

yon a good judge of potatoes and onions ? But I suppose 
Mrs. Thornton assists you in your marketing.” 

“ Not a bit,” replied Mr. Thornton. “ She disapproves of 
the whole plan, and now we never mention it to each other. 
But I manage pretty well, getting in great stocks from Liver- 
pool, and being served in butcher’s meat by our own family 
butcher. I can assure you, the hot dinners the matron turns 
out are by no means to be despised.” 

“ Do you taste each dish as it goes in, in virtue of your 
office? I hope you have a white wand.” 

“ I was very scrupulous, at first, in confining myself to 
the mere purchasing part, and even in that I rather obeyed 
the men’s order, conveyed through the housekeeper, than 
went by my own judgment. At one time, the beef was too 
large, at another the mutton was not fat enough. I think 
they saw how careful I was to leave them free, and not to 
intrude my own ideas upon them ; so, one day, two or three 
of the men — my friend Higgins among them— asked me if I 
would not come in and take a snack. It was a very busy 
day, but I saw that the men would be hurt if, after making 
the advance, I didn’t meet them half-way, so I went in, and 
I never made a better dinner in my life. I told them (my 
next neighbours I mean, for I’m no speech-maker) how much 
I’d enjoyed it; and for some time, whenever that especial 
dinner recurred in their dietary, I was sure to be met by 
these men, with a ‘ Master, there’s hot-pot for dinner to-day,, 
win yo’ come in ? ’ If they had not asked me, I w’ould no 
more have intruded on them than I’d have gone to the mess 
at the barracks without invitation.” 

“ I should think you were rather a restraint on your hosts’ 
conversation. They can’t abuse the masters while you’re 
there. I suspect they take it out on non-hot-pot days.” 

“ Well ! hitherto we’ve steered clear of all vexed questions. 
But if any of the old disputes came up again, I would certainly 
speak out my mind next hot-pot day. But you are hardly 
acquainted with our Darkshire fellows, for all you’re a Dark- 
shire man yourself. They have such a sense of humour, 

43 2 


Alone ! Alone 1 

and such a racy mode of expression ! I am getting really 
to know some of them now, and they talk pretty freely 
before me.” 

“ Nothing like the act of eating for equalising men. Dying 
is nothing to it. The philosopher dies sententiously — the 
pharisee ostentatiously — the simple-hearted humbly — the poor 
idiot blindly, as the sparrow falls to the ground ; the philo- 
sopher and idiot, publican and pharisee, all eat after the same 
fashion — given an equally good digestion. There’s theory tor 
theory for you ! ” 

“ Indeed I have no theory ; I hate theories.” 

“ I beg your pardon. To show my penitence, will you 
accept a ten-pound note towards your marketing, and give 
the poor fellows a feast ? ” 

“ Thank you ; but I’d rather not. They pay me rent 
for the oven and cooking-places at the back of the mill : 
and will have to pay more for the new dining-room. I 
don’t want it to fall into a charity. I don’t want dona- 
tions. Once let in the principle, and I should have people 
going and talking, and spoiling the simplicity of the whole 
thing.” 

“ People will talk about any new plan. You can’t help 
that.” 

“ My enemies, if I have any, may make a philanthropic 
fuss about this dinner scheme ; but you are a friend, and I 
expect you will pay my experiment the respect of silence. 
It is but a new broom at present, and sweeps clean enough. 
But by-and-by we shall meet with plenty of stumbling-blocks 
no doubt.” 


433 


2 F 


North and South 


CHAPTER XLIII 
maegaeet’s flittin’ 

“The mealiest thing to which we bid adieu, 

Loses its meanness in the parting hour.” 

Elliott. 

Mbs. Shaw took as vehement a dislike as it was possible 
for one of her gentle nature to do, against Milton. It was 
noisy, and smoky ; and the poor people whom she saw in 
the streets were dirty, and the rich ladies over- dressed ; and 
not a man that she saw, high or low, had his clothes made 
to fit him. She was sure Margaret would never regain her 
lost strength while she stayed in Milton; and she herself 
was afraid of one of her old attacks of the nerves. Margaret 
must return with her, and that quickly. This, if not the 
exact force of her words, was at any rate the spirit of what 
she urged on Margaret ; till the latter, weak, weary, and 
broken -spirited, yielded a reluctant promise that, as soon as 
Wednesday was over, she would prepare to accompany her 
aunt back to town, leaving Dixon in charge of all the 
arrangements for paying bills, disposing of furniture, and 
shutting up the house. Before that Wednesday — that 
mournful Wednesday, when Mr. Hale was to be interred, 
far away from either of the homes he had known in life, 
and far away from the wife who lay lonely among strangers 
(and this last was Margaret’s great trouble, for she thought 
that if she had not given way to that overwhelming stupor 
during the first sad days, she could have arranged things 
otherwise)— before that Wednesday, Margaret received a 
letter from Mr. Bell. 

“ My dear Margaret, — I did mean to have returned to 
Milton on Thursday ; but unluckily it turns out to be one 
of the rare occasions when we, Plymouth Fellows, are called 
upon to perform any kind of duty, and I must not be absent 

434 


Margaret’s Flittin’ 

from my post. Captain Lennox and Mr. Thornton are here 
The former seems a smart, well-meaning man ; and has 
proposed to go over to Milton, and assist yon in any search 
for the will ; of course there is none, or you would have 
found it by this time, if you followed my directions. Then 
the Captain declares he must take you and his mother-in- 
law home ; and, in his wife’s present state, I don’t see how 
you can expect him to remain away longer than Friday 
However, that Dixon of yours is trusty ; and can hold her, 
or your, own till I come. I will put matters into the hands 
of my Milton attorney if there is no will ; for I doubt this 
smart Captain is no great man of business. Nevertheless, 
his moustachios are splendid. There will have to be a sale ; 
so select what things you wish reserved. Or you can send 
a list afterwards. Now two things more, and I have done. 
You know, or if you don’t, your poor father did, that you 
are to have my money and goods when I die. Not that 
I mean to die yet ; but I name this just to explain what is 
coming. These Lennoxes seem very fond of you now ; and 
perhaps may continue to be; perhaps not. So it is best 
to start with a formal agreement ; namely, that you are to 
pay them two hundred and fifty pounds a year, as long as 
you and they find it pleasant to live together. (This, of 
course, includes Dixon ; mind you don’t be cajoled into 
paying any more for her.) Then you won’t be thrown 
adrift, if some day the captain wishes to have his house to 
himself, but you can carry yourself and your two hundred 
and fifty pounds off somewhere else ; if, indeed, I have not 
claimed you to come and keep house for me first. Then as 
to dress, and Dixon, and personal expenses, and confectionery 
(all young ladies eat confectionery till wisdom comes by 
age), I shall consult some lady of my acquaintance, and 
see how much you will have from your father before fixing 
this. Now, Margaret, have you flown out before you have 
read this far, and wondered what right the old man has to 
settle your affairs for you so cavalierly ? I make no doubt 
you hav§. Yet the old man has a right. He has loved 

435 


North and South 

your father for five-and-thirty years; he stood beside him 
on his wedding-day; he closed his eyes in death. More- 
over, he is your godfather ; and, as he cannot do you much 
good spiritually, having a hidden consciousness of your 
superiority in such things, he would fain do you the poor 
good of endowing you materially. And the old man has 
not a known relation on earth ; ‘ who is there to mourn for 
Adam Bell ? ’ and his whole heart is set and bent upon 
this one thing, and Margaret Hale is not the girl to say him 
nay. Write by return, if only two lines, to tell me your 
answer. But no thanks .” 

Margaret took up a pen and scrawled with trembling 
hand, “ Margaret Hale is not the girl to say him nay.** In 
her weak state she could not think of any other words, and 
yet, she was vexed to use these. But she was so much 
fatigued even by this slight exertion, that if she could have 
thought of another form of acceptance, she could not have 
sate up to write a syllable of it. She was obliged to lie 
down again and try not to think. 

“ My dearest child ! Has that letter vexed or troubled 
you ? ” 

“ No!” said Margaret feebly. “ I shall be better when 
to-morrow is over.” 

“ I feel sure, darling, you won’t be better till I get you 
out of this horrid air. How you can have borne it this two 
years I can’t imagine.” 

“ Where could I go to ? I could not leave papa and 
mamma.” 

“ Well ! don’t distress yourself, my dear. I dare say it 
was all for the best, only I had no conception of how you 
were living. Our butler’s wife lives in a better house than 
this.” 

“It is sometimes very pretty — in summer ; you can’t 
judge by what it is now. I have been very happy here,” 
and Margaret closed her eyes by way of stopping the 
conversation. 


43 6 


Margaret’s Flittin’ 

The house teemed with comfort now, compared to what 
it had been. The evenings were chilly, and by Mrs. Shaw’s 
directions fires were lighted in every bed-room. She petted 
Margaret in every possible way, and bought every delicacy, 
or soft luxury in which she herself would have burrowed 
and sought comfort. But Margaret was indifferent to all 
these things ; or, if they forced themselves upon her attention, 
it was simply as causes for gratitude to her aunt, who was 
putting herself so much out of her way to think of her. She 
was restless, though so weak. All the day long, she kept 
herself from thinking of the ceremony which was going on 
at Oxford, by wandering from room to room, and languidly 
setting aside such articles as she wished to retain. Dixon 
followed her by Mrs. Shaw’s desire, ostensibly to receive 
instructions, but with a private injunction to soothe her into 
repose as soon as might be. 

“ These books, Dixon, I will keep. All the rest will you 
send to Mr. Bell ? They are of a kind that he will value for 

themselves, as well as for papa’s sake. This 1 should 

like you to take this to Mr. Thornton, after I am gone. 
Stay ; I will write a note with it.” And she sate down 
hastily, as if afraid of thinking, and wrote : — 

“ Dear Sir, — The accompanying book I am sure will 
be valued by you for the sake of my father, to whom it 
belonged. 

“ Yours sincerely, 

“ Margaret Hale.” 

She set out again upon her travels through the house, 
turning over articles, known to her from her childhood, with 
a sort of caressing reluctance to leave them — old-fashioned, 
worn and shabby, as they might be. But she hardly spoke 
again ; and Dixon’s report to Mrs. Shaw was, that “ she 
doubted whether Miss Hale heard a word of what she said, 
though she talked the whole time, in order to divert her 
attention.” The consequence of being on her feet all day 

437 


North and South 

was excessive bodily weariness in the evening, and a better 
night’s rest than she had had since she had heard of Mr. 
Hale’s death. 

At breakfast-time the next day, she expressed her wish 
to go and bid one or two friends good-bye. Mrs. Shaw 
objected — 

“ I am sure, my dear, you can have no friends here with 
whom you are sufficiently intimate to justify you in calling 
upon them so soon ; before you have been at church.” 

“ But to-day is my only day ; if Captain Lennox comes 
this afternoon, and if we must — if I must really go to- 
morrow ” 

“ Oh, yes ; we shall go to-morrow. I am more and more 
convinced that this air is bad for you, and makes you look 
so pale and ill ; besides, Edith expects us ; and she may be 
waiting me ; and you cannot be left alone, my dear, at your 
age. No ; if you must pay these calls, I will go with you. 
Dixon can get us a coach, I suppose ? ” 

So Mrs. Shaw went to take care of Margaret, and took her 
maid with her to take care of the shawls and air-cushions. 
Margaret’s face was too sad to lighten up into a smile at all 
this preparation for paying two visits, that she had often 
made by herself at all hours of the day. She was half afraid 
of owning that one place to which she was going was 
Nicholas Higgins's ; all she could do was to hope her aunt 
would be indisposed to get out of the coach, and walk up 
the court, and at every breath of wind have her face slapped 
by wet clothes, hanging out to dry on ropes stretched from 
house to house. 

There was a little battle in Mrs. Shaw’s mind between 
ease and a sense of matronly propriety; but the former 
gained the day ; and, with many an injunction to Margaret 
to be careful of herself, and not to catch any fever, such as 
was always lurking in such places, her aunt permitted her 
to go where she had often been before without taking any 
precaution or requiring any permission. 

Nicholas was out; only Mary and one or two of the 
438 


Margaret’s Flittin’ 

Boucher children at home. Margaret was vexed with her- 
self for not having timed her visit better. Mary had a very 
blunt intellect, although her feelings were warm and kind ; 
and, the instant she understood what Margaret’s purpose 
was in coming to see them, she began to cry and sob with 
so little restraint that Margaret found it useless to say any 
of the thousand little things which had suggested themselves 
to her as she was coming along in the coach. She could 
only try to comfort her a little by suggesting the vague 
chance of their meeting again, at some possible time, in 
some possible place, and bid her tell her father how much 
she wished, if he could manage it, that he should come to 
see her when he had done his work in the evening. 

As she was leaving the place, she stopped and looked 
round ; then hesitated a little before she said — 

“ I should like to have some little thing to remind me of 
Bessy.” 

Instantly Mary’s generosity was keenly alive. What 
could they give ? And on Margaret’s singling out a little 
common drinking-cup, which she remembered as the one 
always standing by Bessy’s side with drink for her feverish 
lips, Mary said — 

“Oh, take summat better ; that only cost fourpence ! ” 

“ That will do, thank you,” said Margaret ; and she went 
quickly away, while the light caused by the pleasure of having 
something to give yet lingered on Mary’s face. 

“ Now to Mrs. Thornton’s,” thought she to herself. “ It 
must be done.” But she looked rather rigid and pale at the 
thoughts of it, and had hard work to find the exact words in 
which to explain to her aunt who Mrs. Thornton was, and 
why she should go to bid her farewell. 

They (for Mrs. Shaw alighted here) were shown into the 
drawing-room, in which a fire had only just been kindled. 
Mrs. Shaw huddled herself up in her shawl, and shivered. 

“ What an icy room ! ” she said. 

They had to wait for some time before Mrs. Thornton 
entered. There was some softening in her heart towards 

439 


North and South 

Margaret, now that she was going away out of her sight. 
She remembered her spirit, as shown at various times and 
places, even more than the patience with which she had 
endured long and wearing cares. Her countenance was 
blander than usual, as she greeted her; there was even a 
shade of tenderness in her manner, as she noticed the white 
tear-swollen face, and the quiver in the voice which Margaret 
tried to make so steady. 

“ Allow me to introduce my aunt, Mrs. Shaw. I am 
going away from Milton to-morrow ; I do not know if you 
are aware of it ; but I wanted to see you once again, Mrs. 
Thornton, to — to apologise for my manner the last time I 
saw you ; and to say that I am sure you meant kindly — 
however much we may have misunderstood each other.” 

Mrs. Shaw looked extremely perplexed by what Margaret 
had said. Thanks for kindness ! and apologies for failure in 
good manners ! But Mrs. Thornton replied — 

“ Miss Hale, I am glad you do me justice. I did no more 
than I believed to be my duty in remonstrating with you as 
I did. I have always desired to act the part of a friend to 
you. I am glad you do me justice.” 

“ And,” said Margaret, blushing excessively as she spoke, 
“ will you do me justice, and believe that though I cannot — 
I do not choose — to give explanations of my conduct, I have 
not acted in the unbecoming way you apprehended? ” 

Margaret’s voice was so soft, and her eyes so pleading, that 
Mrs. Thornton was for once affected by the charm of manner 
to which she had hitherto proved herself invulnerable. 

“ Yes, I do believe you. Let us say no more about it. 
Where are you going to reside, Miss Hale ? I understood 
from Mr. Bell that you were going to leave Milton. You 
never liked Milton, you know,” said Mrs. Thornton, with a 
sort of grim smile ; “ but for all that, you must not expect 
me to congratulate you on quitting it. Where shall you 
live ? ” 

“ With my aunt,” replied Margaret, turning towards Mrs. 
Shaw. 


440 


Margaret’s Flittin’ 

“ My niece will reside with me in Harley Street. She 
is almost like a daughter to me,” said Mrs. Shaw, looking 
fondly at Margaret ; “ and I am glad to acknowledge my 
own obligation for any kindness that has been shown to her. 
If you and your husband ever come to town, my son and 
daughter, Captain and Mrs. Lennox, will, I am sure, join 
with me in wishing to do anything in our power to show 
you attention.” 

Mrs. Thornton thought in her own mind, that Margaret 
had not taken much care to enlighten her aunt as to the 
relationship between the Mr. and Mrs. Thornton, towards 
whom the fine-lady aunt was extending her soft patronage ; 
so she answered shortly — 

“ My husband is dead. Mr. Thornton is my son. I 
never go to London ; so I am not likely to be able to avail 
myself of your polite offers.” 

At this instant Mr. Thornton entered the room ; he had 
only just returned from Oxford. His mourning suit spoke of 
the reason that had called him there. 

“ John,” said his mother, “ this lady is Mrs. Shaw, Miss 
Hale’s aunt. I am sorry to say, that Miss Hale’s call is to 
wish us good-bye.” 

“ You are going then ? ” said he in a low voice. 

“ Yes,” said Margaret. “ We leave to-morrow.” 

“ My son-in-law comes this evening to escort us,” said 
Mrs. Shaw. 

Mr. Thornton turned away. He had not sat down, and 
now he seemed to be examining something on the table, almost 
as if he had discovered an unopened letter, which had made 
him forget the present company. He did not even seem 
to be aware when they got up to take leave. He started 
forwards, however, to hand Mrs. Shaw down to the carriage. 
As it drove up, he and Margaret stood close together on the 
door-step, and it was impossible but that the recollection of 
the day of the riot should force itself into both their minds. 
Into his it came associated with the speeches of the follow- 
ing day; her passionate declaration that there was not a 

44 1 


North and South 

man in all that violent and desperate crowd, for whom she 
did not care as much as for him. And at the remembrance 
of her taunting words, his brow grew stern, though his heart 
beat thick with longing love. 

“ No ! ” said he, “ I put it to the touch once, and I lost it 
all. Let her go — with her stony heart, and her beauty ; — 
how set and terrible her look is now, for all her loveliness of 
feature ! She is afraid I shall speak what will require some 
stern repression. Let her go. Beauty and heiress as she 
may be, she will find it hard to meet with a truer heart than 
mine. Let her go ! ” 

And there was no tone of regret, or emotion of any kind 
in the voice with which he said good-bye ; and the offered 
hand was taken with a resolute calmness, and dropped as 
carelessly as if it had been a dead and withered flower. But 
none in his household saw Mr. Thornton again that day. 
He was busily engaged ; or so he said. 

Margaret’s strength was so utterly exhausted by these 
visits, that she had to submit to much watching and petting, 
and sighing “ I-told-you-so’s,” from her aunt. Dixon said she 
was quite as bad as she had been on the first day she heard 
of her father’s death ; and she and Mrs. Shaw consulted as 
to the desirableness of delaying the morrow’s journey. But 
when her aunt reluctantly proposed a few days’ delay to 
Margaret, the latter writhed her body as if in acute suffering, 
and said — 

“ Oh ! let us go. I cannot be patient here. I shall not 
get well here. I want to forget.” 

So the arrangements went on ; and Captain Lennox came, 
and with him news of Edith and the little boy ; and Mar- 
garet found that the indifferent, careless conversation of one 
who, however kind, was not too warm and anxious a sym- 
pathiser, did her good. She roused up ; and by the time 
that she knew she might expect Higgins, she was able to 
leave the room quietly, and await in her own chamber the 
expected summons. 

“ Eh ! ” said he, as she came in, “ to think of th’ oud 
442 


Margaret’s Flittin’ 

gentleman dropping off as he did ! Yo’ might ha’ knocked 
me down wi’ a straw when they telled me. ‘ Mr. Hale ? ’ 
said I ; ‘ him as was th’ parson ? ’ ‘ Ay,’ said they. ‘ Then,’ 

said I, * there’s as good a man gone as ever lived on this 
earth, let who will be t’other ! ’ And I came to see yo’, and 
tell yo’ how grieved I were, but them women in th’ kitchen 
wouldn’t tell yo’ I were there. They said yo’ were ill — 
and butter me, but yo’ dunnot look like th’ same wench. And 
yo’re going to be a grand lady up i’ Lunnon, aren’t yo’ ? ” 

“ Not a grand lady,” said Margaret, half smiling. 

“ Well ! Thornton said — says he, a day or two ago, 

‘ Higgins, have yo’ seen Miss Hale ? ’ ‘ No,’ says I ; ‘ there’s 
a pack o’ women who won’t let me at her. But I can bide 
my time, if she’s ill. She and I knows each other pretty well ; 
and hoo’ll not go doubting that I’m main sorry for th’ oud 
gentleman's death, just because I can’t get at her and tell her 
so.’ And says he, ‘ Yo’ll not have much time for to try and 
see her, my fine chap. She’s not for staying with us a day 
longer nor she can help. She’s got grand relations, and 
they’re carrying her off ; and we sha’n’t see her no more.’ 

* Measter,’ said I, ‘ if I dunnot see her afore hoo goes, I’ll 
strive to get up to Lunnun next Whissuntide, that I will. 
I’ll not be baulked of saying her good-bye by any relations 
whatsomdever.’ But, bless yo’, I knowed yo’d come. It 
were only for to humour the measter, I let on as if I thought 
yo’d m’appen leave Milton without seeing me.” 

“ You’re quite right,” said Margaret. “ You only do me 
justice. And you’ll not forget me, I’m sure. If no one else 
in Milton remembers me, I’m certain you will; and papa 
too. You know how good and how tender he was. Look, 
Higgins ! here is his Bible. I have kept it for you. I can 
ill spare it; but I know he would have liked you to have 
it. I’m sure you’ll care for it, and study what is in it, for 
his sake.” 

“ Yo’ may say that. If it were the deuce’s own scribble, 
and yo’ axed me to read in it for yo’r sake and th’ oud gentle- 
man’s, I’d do it. Whatten’s this, wench ? I’m not going 

443 


North and South 

for to take yo’r brass, so dunnot think it. We’ve been great 
friends, ’bout the sound o’ money passing between us.” 

“ For the children — for Boucher’s children,” said Margaret 
hurriedly. “ They may need it. You’ve no right to refuse it 
for them. I would not give you a penny,” she said, smiling ; 
“ don’t think there’s any of it for you.” 

“ Well, wench ! I can nobbut say, Bless yo’ ! and bless 
yo’ ! — and amen.” 


CHAPTEB XLIV 

EASE, NOT PEACE 

“ A dull rotation, never at a stay, 

Yesterday’s face twin image of to-day.” 

Cowper. 

“ Of what each one should be, he sees the form and rule, 

And till he reach to that, his joy can ne’er be full.” 

Ruckert. 

It was very well for Margaret that the extreme quiet of the 
Harley Street house, during Edith’s recovery from her con- 
finement, gave her the natural rest which she needed. It 
gave her time to comprehend the sudden change which had 
taken place in her circumstances within the last two months. 
She found herself at once an inmate of a luxurious house, 
where the bare knowledge of the existence of every trouble 
or care seemed scarcely to have penetrated. The wheels of 
the machinery of daily life were well oiled, and went along 
with delicious smoothness. Mrs. Shaw and Edith could 
hardly make enough of Margaret, on her return to what they 
persisted in calling her home. And she felt that it was 
almost ungrateful in her to have a secret feeling that the 
Helstone vicarage — nay, even the poor little house at Milton, 
with her anxious father and her invalid mother, and all the 
small household cares of comparative poverty, composed her 

444 


Ease, not Peace 

idea of home. Edith was impatient to get well, in order to 
fill Margaret’s bed-room with all the soft comforts, and pretty 
nick-nacks, with which her own abounded. Mrs. Shaw and 
her maid found plenty of occupation in restoring Margaret’s 
wardrobe to a state of elegant variety. Captain Lennox was 
easy, kind, and gentlemanly ; sate with his wife in her dressing- 
room an hour or two every day ; played with his little boy for 
another hour, and lounged away the rest of his time at his 
club, when he was not engaged out to dinner. Just before 
Margaret had recovered from her necessity for quiet and 
repose — before she had begun to feel her life wanting and 
dull — Edith came downstairs and resumed her usual part in 
the household ; and Margaret fell into the old habit of watch- 
ing, and admiring, and ministering to her cousin. She gladly 
took all charge of the semblances of duties off Edith’s hands ; 
answered notes, reminded her of engagements, tended her 
when no gaiety was in prospect, and she was consequently 
rather inclined to fancy herself ill. But all the rest of the 
family were in the full business of the London season, and 
Margaret was often left alone. Then her thoughts went 
back to Milton, with a strange sense of the contrast between 
the life there, and here. She was getting surfeited of the 
eventless ease in which no struggle or endeavour was required. 
She was afraid lest she should even become sleepily deadened 
into forgetfulness of anything beyond the life which was lap- 
ping her round with luxury. There might be toilers and 
moilers there in London, but she never saw them ; the very 
servants lived in an underground world of their own, of which 
she knew neither the hopes nor the fears ; they only seemed 
to start into existence when some want or whim of their 
master and mistress needed them. There was a strange 
unsatisfied vacuum in Margaret’s heart and mode of life; 
and once, when she had dimly hinted this to Edith, the latter, 
wearied with dancing the night before, languidly stroked 
Margaret’s cheek as she sat by her in the old attitude — she 
on a footstool by the sofa where Edith lay. 

“ Poor child ! ” said Edith. “ It is a little sad for you to 
445 


North and South 

be left, night after night, just at this time when all the 
world is so gay. But we shall be having our dinner-parties 
soon — as soon as Henry comes back from circuit — and then 
there will be a little pleasant variety for you. No wonder it 
is moped, poor darling ! ” 

Margaret did not feel as if the dinner-parties would be a 
panacea. But Edith piqued herself on her dinner-parties; 
“ so different,” as she said, “ from the old dowager dinners 
under mamma’s regime ; ” and Mrs. Shaw herself seemed to 
take exactly the same kind of pleasure in the very different 
arrangements and circle of acquaintances which were to 
Captain and Mrs. Lennox’s taste as she did in the more 
formal and ponderous entertainments which she herself used 
to give. Captain Lennox was always extremely kind and 
brotherly to Margaret. She was really very fond of him, 
excepting when he was anxiously attentive to Edith’s dress 
and appearance, with a view to her beauty making a suf- 
ficient impression on the world. Then all the latent Vashti 
in Margaret was roused, and she could hardly keep herself 
from expressing her feelings. 

The course of Margaret’s day was this : a quiet hour or 
two before a late breakfast ; an unpunctual meal, lazily eaten 
by weary and half-awake people, but yet at which, in all its 
dragged-out length, she was expected to be present, because 
directly afterwards came a discussion of plans, at which, 
although they none of them concerned her, she was expected 
to give her sympathy, if she could not assist with her advice ; 
an endless number of notes to write, which Edith invariably 
left to her, with many caressing compliments as to her 
eloquence du billet ; a little play with Sholto as he returned 
from his morning’s walk; besides the care of the children 
during the servants’ dinner ; a drive or callers ; and some 
dinner or morning engagement for her aunt and cousins, 
which left Margaret free, it is true, but rather wearied with 
the inactivity of the day, coming upon depressed spirits and 
delicate health. 

She looked forward with longing, though unspoken 
446 


Ease, not Peace 

interest, to the homely object of Dixon’s return from Milton ; 
where, until now, the old servant had been busily engaged in 
winding up all the affairs of the Hale family. It had appeared 
a sudden famine to her heart, this entire cessation of any 
news respecting the people amongst whom she had lived so 
long. It was true, that Dixon, in her business-letters, quoted, 
every now and then, an opinion of Mr. Thornton’s as to 
what she had better do about the furniture, or how act in 
regard to the landlord of the Crampton Terrace house. But 
it was only here and there that the name came in, or any 
Milton name indeed ; and Margaret was sitting one evening, 
all alone, in the Lennoxes’ drawing-room, not reading Dixon’s 
letters, which yet she held in her hand, but thinking over 
them, and recalling the days which had been, and picturing 
the busy life out of which her own had been taken and never 
missed ; wondering if all went on in that whirl just as if she 
and her father had never been ; questioning within herself, if 
no one in all the crowd missed her (not Higgins, she was not 
thinking of him), when, suddenly, Mr. Bell was announced ; 
and Margaret hurried the letters into her work-basket, and 
started up, blushing as if she had been doing some guilty 
thing. 

“ Oh, Mr. Bell ! I never thought of seeing you ! ” 

“ But you give me a welcome, I hope, as well as that 
very pretty start of surprise.” 

“ Have you dined ? How did you come ? Let me order 
you some dinner.” 

“ If you’re going to have any. Otherwise, you know, 
there is no one who cares less for eating than I do. But 
where are the others ? Gone out to dinner ? Left you 
alone ? ” 

“ Oh yes ! and it is such a rest. I was just thinking — 
But will you run the risk of dinner ? I don’t know if there 
is anything in the house.” 

“ Why, to tell you the truth, I dined at my club. Only 
they don’t cook as well as they did, so I thought, if you were 
going to dine, I might try and make out my dinner. But 

447 


North and South 

never mind, never mind ! There aren’t ten cooks in England 
to be trusted at impromptu dinners. If their skill and their 
fires will stand it, their tempers won’t. You shall make me 
some tea, Margaret. And now, what were you thinking of ? 
you were going to tell me. Whose letters were those, god- 
daughter, that you hid away so speedily ? ” 

“ Only Dixon’s,” replied Margaret, growing very red. 

“ Whew ! is that all ? Who do you think came up in the 
train with me ? ” 

“ I don’t know,” said Margaret, resolved against making 
a guess. 

“ Your what d’ye call him ? What’s the right name for a 
cousin-in-law’s brother ? ” 

“ Mr. Henry Lennox ? ” asked Margaret. 

“ Yes,” replied Mr. Bell. “ You knew him formerly, 
didn’t you ? What sort of a person' is he, Margaret ? ” 

“ I liked him long ago,” said Margaret, glancing down for 
a moment. And then she looked straight up and went on in 
her natural manner. “ You know we have been correspond- 
ing about Frederick since ; but I have not seen him for 
nearly three years, and he may be changed. What did you 
think of him ? ” 

“ I don’t know. He was so busy trying to find out who I 
was, in the first instance, and what I was, in the second, that 
he never let out what he was ; unless indeed that veiled 
curiosity of his as to what manner of man he had to talk to 
was not a good piece, and a fair indication, of his character. 
Do you call him good-looking, Margaret ? ’ 

“ No ! certainly not. Do you ? ” 

Not I. But I thought perhaps you might. Is he a 
great deal here ? ” 

“ I fancy he is when he is in town. He has been on 
circuit now since I came. But — Mr. Bell — have you come 
from Oxford or from Milton ? ” 

“ From Milton. Don’t you see I’m smoke-dried ? ” 

“ Certainly. But I thought that it might be the effect of 
the antiquities of Oxford.” 


448 


Ease, not Peace 

“ Come now, be a sensible woman ! In Oxford, I could 
have managed all the landlords in the place, and had my own 
way, with half the trouble your Milton landlord has given 
me, and defeated me after all. He won’t take the house off 
our hands till next June twelvemonth. Luckily, Mr. Thorn- 
ton found a tenant for it. Why don’t you ask after Mr. 
Thornton, Margaret ? He has proved himself a very active 
friend of yours, I can tell you. Taken more than half the 
trouble off my hands.” 

“ And how is he ? How is Mrs. Thornton ? ” asked 
Margaret hurriedly and below her breath, though she tried to 
speak out. 

“ I suppose they’re well. I’ve been staying at their house 
till I was driven out of it by the perpetual clack about that 
Thornton girl’s marriage. It was too much foi* Thornton 
himself, though she was his sister. He used to go and sit 
in his own room perpetually. He’s getting past the age for 
caring for such things, either as principal or accessory. I 
was surprised to find the old lady falling into the current, 
and carried away by her daughter’s enthusiasm for orange- 
blossoms and lace. I thought Mrs. Thornton had been 
made of sterner stuff.” 

“ She would put on any assumption of feeling to veil her 
daughter’s weakness,” said Margaret in a low voice. 

“ Perhaps so. You’ve studied her, have you ? She 
doesn’t seem over fond of you, Margaret.” 

“ I know it,” said Margaret. “ Oh, here is tea at last ! ” 
exclaimed she, as if relieved. And with tea came Mr. Henry 
Lennox, who had walked up to Harley Street after a late 
dinner, and had evidently expected to find his brother and 
sister-in-law at home. Margaret suspected him of being as 
thankful as she was at the presence of a third party, on 
this their first meeting since the memorable day of his offer, 
and her refusal, at Helstone. She could hardly tell what to 
say at first, and was thankful for all the tea-table occupa- 
tions, which gave her an excuse for keeping silence, and him 
an opportunity of recovering himself. For, to tell the truth, 

449 2 G 


North and South 

he had rather forced himself up to Harley Street this even- 
ing, with a view of getting over an awkward meeting, 
awkward even in the presence of Captain Lennox and Edith, 
and doubly awkward now that he found her the only lady 
there, and the person to whom he must naturally and per- 
force address a great part of his conversation. She was the 
first to recover her self-possession. She began to talk on 
the subject which came uppermost in her mind, after the 
first flush of awkward shyness. 

“ Mr. Lennox, I have been so much obliged to you for 
all you have done about Frederick.” 

“ I am only sorry it has been so unsuccessful,” replied 
he, with a quick glance towards Mr. Bell, as if reconnoitring 
how much he might say before him. Margaret, as if she 
read his thought, addressed herself to Mr. Bell, both in- 
cluding him in the conversation, and implying that he was 
perfectly aware of the endeavours that had been made to 
clear Frederick. 

“ That Horrocks — that very last witness of all, has 
proved as unavailing as all the others. Mr. Lennox has 
discovered that he sailed for Australia only last August; 
only two months before Frederick was in England, and gave 
us the names of ” 

“ Frederick in England ! you never told me that ! ” 
exclaimed Mr. Bell in surprise. 

“ I thought you knew. I never doubted you had been 
told. Of course, it was a great secret, and perhaps I should 
not have named it now,” said Margaret, a little dismayed. 

“ I have never named it to either my brother or your 
cousin,” said Mr. Lennox, with a little professional dryness 
of implied reproach. 

“ Never mind, Margaret. I am not living in a talking, 
babbling world, nor yet among people who are trying to 
worm facts out of me; you needn’t look so frightened 
because you have let the cat out of the bag to a faithful old 
hermit like me. I shall never name his having been in 
England ; I shall be out of temptation, for no one will ask 

• 45 ° 


Ease, not Peace 

me. Stay ! ” (interrupting himself rather abruptly.) “Was 
it at your mother’s funeral ? ” 

“ He was with mamma when she died,” said Margaret 
softly. 

“To be sure ! To be sure ! Why, some one asked me if 
he had not been over then, and I denied it stoutly — not many 
weeks ago— who could it have been ? Oh ! I recollect ! ” 

But he did not say the name ; and although Margaret 
would have given much to know if her suspicions were right, 
and it had been Mr. Thornton who had made the inquiry, 
she could not ask the question of Mr. Bell, much as she 
longed to do so. 

There was a pause for a moment or two. Then Mr. 
Lennox said, addressing himself to Margaret — 

“ I suppose, as Mr. Bell is now acquainted with all the 
circumstances attending your brother’s unfortunate dilemma, 
I cannot do better than inform him exactly how the research 
into the evidence we once hoped to produce in his favour 
stands at present. So, if he will do me the honour to 
breakfast with me to-morrow, we will go over the names of 
these missing gentry.” 

“ I should like to hear all the particulars, if I may. Can- 
not you come here ? I dare not ask you both to breakfast, 
though I am sure you would be welcome. But let me know 
all I can about Frederick, even though there may be no hope 
at present.” 

“ I have an engagement at half-past eleven. But I will 
certainly come if you wish it,” replied Mr. Lennox with a 
little after-thought of extreme willingness, which made 
Margaret shrink into herself, and almost wish that she had 
not proposed her natural request. Mr. Bell got up and 
looked around him for his hat, which had been removed to 
make room for tea. 

“ Well ! ” said he, “I don’t know what Mr. Lennox is 
inclined to do, but I’m disposed to be moving off homewards. 
I’ve been a journey to-day, and journeys begin to tell upon 
my sixty and odd years.” 


45 1 


North and South 

“ I believe I shall stay and see my brother and sister,” 
said Mr. Lennox, making no movement of departure. 
Margaret was seized with a shy, awkward dread of being left 
alone with him. The scene on the little terrace in the 
Helstone garden was so present to her, that she could hardly 
help believing it was so with him. 

“ Don’t go yet, please Mr. Bell,” said she hastily. ** I 
want you to see Edith ; and I want Edith to know you. 
Please ! ” said she, laying a light but determined hand on 
his arm. He looked at her, and saw the confusion stirring 
in her countenance ; he sate down again, as if her little 
touch had been possessed of resistless strength. 

“You see how she overpowers me, Mr. Lennox,” said, 
he. “ And I hope you noticed the happy choice of her 
expressions ; she wants me to ‘ see ’ this cousin Edith, who, 
I am told, is a great beauty ; but she has the honesty to 
change her word when she comes to me — Mrs. Lennox is to 
‘ know ’ me. I suppose I am not much to ‘ see,’ eh, 
Margaret ? ” 

He joked, to give her time to recover from the slight 
flutter which he had detected in her manner on his proposal 
to leave ; and she caught the tone, and threw the ball back. 

Mr. Lennox wondered how his brother, the Captain, 
could have reported her as having lost all her good looks. 
To be sure, in her quiet black dress, she was a contrast to 
Edith, dancing in her white crape mourning, and long 
floating golden hair, all softness and glitter. She dimpled 
and blushed most becomingly when introduced to Mr. Bell, 
conscious that she had her reputation as a beauty to keep 
up, and that it would not do to have a Mordecai refusing to 
worship and admire, even in the shape of an old Fellow of 
a College, which nobody had ever heard of. 

Mrs. Shaw and Captain Lennox, each in their separate 
way, gave Mr. Bell a kind and sincere welcome, winning 
him over to like them almost in spite of himself, especially 
when he saw how naturally Margaret took her place as 
sister and daughter of the house. 

452 


Ease, not Peace 

“ What a shame that we were not at home to receive 
you,” said Edith. “ You, too, Henry ! though I don’t know 
that we should have stayed at home for you. And for Mr. 
Bell ! for Margaret’s Mr. Bell ” 

“ There is no knowing what sacrifices you would not have 
made, said her brother-in-law. “ Even a dinner-party ! and 
the delight of wearing this very becoming dress.” 

Edith did not know whether to frown or to smile. But 
it did not suit Mr. Lennox to drive her to the first of these 
alternatives ; so he went on — 

“ Will you show your readiness to make sacrifices to- 
morrow morning, first, by asking me to breakfast, to meet 
Mr. Bell, and secondly, by being so kind as to order it at 
half-past nine, instead of ten o’clock ? I have some letters 
and papers that I want to show to Miss Hale and Mr. Bell.” 

“ I hope Mr. Bell will make our house his own during 
his stay in London,” said Captain Lennox. “ I am only so 
sorry we cannot offer him a bed-room.” 

“ Thank you. I am much obliged to you. You would 
only think me a churl if you had, for I should decline it, 
I believe, in spite of all the temptations of such agreeable 
company,” said Mr. Bell, bowing all round, and secretly 
congratulating himself on the neat turn he had given to his 
sentence, which, if put into plain language, would have been 
more to this effect — “ I couldn’t stand the restraints of such 
a proper-behaved and civil-spoken set of people as these are : 
it would be like meat without salt. I’m thankful they 
haven’t a bed. And how well I rounded my sentence ! I’m 
absolutely catching the trick of good manners.” 

His self-satisfaction lasted him till he was fairly out in 
the streets, walking side' by side with Henry Lennox. Here 
he suddenly remembered Margaret’s little look of entreaty as 
she urged him to stay longer, and he also recollected a few 
hints given him long ago by an acquaintance of Mr. Lennox’s, 
as to his admiration of Margaret. It gave a new direction 
to his thoughts. 

“ You have known Miss Hale for a long time, I believe. 

453 


North and South 

How do you think her looking? She strikes me as pale 
and ill.” 

“ I thought her looking remarkably well. Perhaps not 
when I first came in — now I think of it. But certainly, 
when she grew animated, she looked as well as ever I saw 
her do.” 

“ She has had a great deal to go through,” said Mr. Bell. 

“ Yes ! I have been sorry to hear of all she has had to 
bear : not merely the common and universal sorrow arising 
from death, but all the annoyance which her father’s conduct 
must have caused her, and then ” 

“ Her father’s conduct ! ” said Mr. Bell, in an accent of 
surprise. “You must have heard some wrong statement. 
He behaved in the most conscientious manner. He showed 
more resolute strength than I should ever have given him 
credit for formerly.” 

“ Perhaps I have been wrongly informed. But I have 
been told, by his successor in the living — a clever, sensible 
man, and a thoroughly active clergyman — that there was no 
call upon Mr. Hale to do what he did, relinquish the living, 
and throw himself and his family on the tender mercies of 
private teaching in a manufacturing town; the bishop had 
offered him another living, it is true, but, if he had come to 
entertain certain doubts, he could have remained where he 
was, and so had no occasion to resign. But the truth is, 
these country clergymen live such isolated lives — isolated, 
I mean, from all intercourse with men of equal cultivation 
with themselves, by whose minds they might regulate their 
own, and discover when they were going either too fast or 
too slow — that they are very apt to disturb themselves with 
imaginary doubts as to the articles- of faith, and throw up 
certain opportunities of doing good for very uncertain fancies 
of their own. 

“ I differ from you. I do not think they are very apt to 
do as my poor friend Hale did.” Mr. Bell was inwardly 
chafing. 

“ Perhaps I used too general an expression in saying 
454 


Ease, not Peace 

* very apt.’ But, certainly, their lives are such as very often 
to produce either inordinate self-sufficiency, or a morbid 
state of conscience,” replied Mr. Lennox with perfect 
coolness. 

“ You don’t meet with any self-sufficiency among the 
lawyers, for instance,” asked Mr. Bell. “ And seldom, I 
imagine, any cases of morbid conscience ? ” He was be- 
coming more and more vexed, and forgetting his lately- 
caught trick of good manners. Mr. Lennox saw now that 
he had annoyed his companion ; and, as he had talked pretty 
much for the sake of saying something, and so passing the 
time while their road lay together, he was very indifferent as 
to the exact side he took upon the question, and quietly came 
round by saying — 

“To be sure, there is something fine in a man of Mr. 
Hale’s age leaving his home of twenty years, and giving 
up all settled habits, for an idea which was probably erro- 
neous — but that does not matter — an intangible thought. 
One cannot help admiring him, with a mixture of pity in 
one’s admiration, something like what one feels for Don 
Quixote. Such a gentleman as he was too ! I shall never 
forget the refined and simple hospitality he showed to me 
that last day at Helstone.” 

Only half-mollified, and yet anxious, in order to lull 
certain qualms of his own conscience, to believe that Mr. 
Hale’s conduct had a tinge of Quixotism in it, Mr. Bell 
growled out — “Aye! And you don’t know Milton. Such 
a change from Helstone ! It is years since I have been at 
Helstone— but I’ll answer for it, it is standing there yet— 
every stick and every stone as it has done for the last century, 
while Milton! I go there every four or five years— and I 
was bom there — yet I do assure you, I often lose my way — 
ay, among the very piles of warehouses that are built upon 
my father’s orchard. Do we part here? Well, good night, 
sir; I suppose we shall meet in Harley Street to-morrow 
morning.” 


455 


North and South 


CHAPTEK XLV 

NOT ALL A DKEAM 

•• Where are the sounds that swam along 
The buoyant air when I was young ; 

The last vibration now is o’er, 

And they who listened are no more ; 

Ah I let me close my eyes and dream.” 

W. S. Landor. 

The idea of Helstone had been suggested to Mr. Bell’s 
waking mind by his conversation with Mr. Lennox, and all 
night long it ran riot through his dreams. He was again a 
tutor in the college where he still held the rank of Fellow ; 
it was again a long vacation, and he was staying with his 
newly-married friend, the proud husband, and happy Vicar 
of Helstone. Over babbling brooks they took impossible 
leaps, which seemed to keep them whole days suspended 
in the air. Time and space were not, though all other things 
seemed real. Every event was measured by the emotions 
of the mind, not by its actual existence, for existence it 
had none. But the trees were gorgeous in their autumnal 
leafiness — the warm odours of flower and herb came sweet 
upon the sense — the young wife moved about her house 
with just that mixture of annoyance at her position, as 
regarded wealth, with pride in her handsome and devoted 
husband, which Mr. Bell had noticed in real life a quarter 
of a century ago. 

The dream was so like life that, when he awoke, his pre- 
sent life seemed like a dream. Where was he ? In the close, 
handsomely-furnished room of a London hotel! Where 
were those who spoke to him, moved around him, touched 
him, not an instant ago ? Dead ! buried ! lost for evermore, 
as far as earth’s for evermore would extend. He was an 
old man, lately exultant in the full strength of manhood. 
The utter loneliness of his life was insupportable to think 

456 


Not all a Dream 

about. He got up hastily, and tried to forget what never 
more might be, in a hurried dressing for the breakfast in 
Harley Street. 

He could not attend to all the lawyer’s details, which, 
as he saw, made Margaret’s eyes dilate, and her bps grow 
pale, as one by one fate decreed, or so it seemed, every 
morsel of evidence which would exonerate Frederick, should 
fall from beneath her feet and disappear. Even Mr. Lennox’s 
well-regulated professional voice took a softer, tenderer tone, 
as he drew near to the extinction of the last hope. It was 
not that Margaret had not been perfectly aware of the 
result before. It was only that the details of each successive 
disappointment came with such relentless minuteness to 
quench all hope, that she at last fairly gave way to tears. 
Mr. Lennox stopped reading. 

“ I had better not go on,” said he in a concerned voice. 
“ It was a foolish proposal of mine. Lieutenant Hale,” 
and even this giving him the title of the service from which 
he had so harshly been expelled was soothing to Margaret. 
“Lieutenant Hale is happy now; more secure in fortune 
and future prospects than he could ever have been in the 
navy; and has, doubtless, adopted his wife’s country as 
his own.” 

“ That is it,” said Margaret. “ It seems so selfish in me 
to regret it,” trying to smile, “ and yet he is lost to me, and 
I am so lonely.” 

Mr. Lennox turned over his papers, and wished that he 
were as rich and prosperous as he believed he should be 
some day. Mr. Bell blew his nose, but, otherwise, he also 
kept silence; and Margaret, in a minute or two, had ap- 
parently recovered her usual composure. She thanked Mr. 
Lennox very courteously for his trouble ; all the more cour- 
teously and graciously because she was conscious that, by 
her behaviour, he might have probably been led to imagine 
that he had given her needless pain. Yet it was pain she 
would not have been without. 

Mr. Bell came up to wish her good-bye. 

457 


North and South 

“ Margaret ! ” said he, as he fumbled with his gloves, “ I 
am going down to Helstone to-morrow, to look at the old 
place. Would you like to come with me? Or would it 
give you too much pain ? Speak out, don’t be afraid.” 

“ Oh, Mr. Bell,” said she — and could say no more. But 
she took his old gouty hand, and kissed it. 

“ Come, come ; that’s enough,” said he, reddening with 
awkwardness. “ I suppose your Aunt Shaw will trust you 
with me. We’ll go to-morrow morning, and we shall get 
there about two o’clock, I fancy. We’ll take a snack, and 
order dinner at the little inn — the Lennard Arms, it used to 
be — and go and get an appetite in the Forest. Can you 
stand it, Margaret ? It will be a trial, I know, to both of 
us, but it will be a pleasure to me, at least. And there we’ll 
dine — it will be but doe-venison, if we can get it at all — and 
then I’ll take my nap while you go out and see old friends. 
I’ll give you back safe and sound, barring railway accidents, 
and I’ll insure your life for a thousand pounds before starting, 
which may be some comfort to your relations ; but, otherwise, 
I’ll bring you back to Mrs. Shaw by lunch-time on Friday. 
So, if you say yes, I’ll just go upstairs and propose it.” 

“ It’s no use my trying to say how much I shall like it,” 
said Margaret through her tears. 

“ Well, then, prove your gratitude by keeping those foun- 
tains of yours dry for the next two days. If you don’t, I 
shall feel queer myself about the lachrymal ducts, and I don’t 
like that.” 

“ I won’t cry a drop,” said Margaret, winking her eyes to 
shake the tears off her eyelashes, and forcing a smile. 

“ There’s my good girl. Then we’ll go upstairs and settle 
it all.” Margaret was in a state of almost trembling eager- 
ness, while Mr. Bell discussed his plan with her Aunt Shaw, 
who was first startled, then doubtful and perplexed, and in 
the end yielding rather to the rough force of Mr. Bell’s 
words than to her own conviction ; for to the last, whether 
it was right or wrong, proper or improper, she could not 
settle to her own satisfaction, till Margaret’s safe return, the 

458 


Once and Now 

happy fulfilment of the project, gave her decision enough to 
say, “ she was sure it had been a very kind thought of Mr. 
Bell’s, and just what she herself had been wishing for Mar- 
garet, as giving her the very change which she required, 
after all the anxious time she had had.” 


CHAPTER XLVI 

ONCE AND NOW 

“ So on those happy days of yore 
Oft as I dare to dwell once more, 

Still must I miss the friends so tried, 

Whom Death has severed from my side. 

But ever when true friendship binds, 

Spirit it is that spirit finds ; 

In spirit then our bliss we found, 

In spirit yet to them I’m bound.” 

Uhland. 

Margaret was ready long before the appointed time, and 
had leisure enough to cry a little, quietly, when unobserved, 
and to smile brightly when any one looked at her. Her la&t 
alarm was lest they should be too late and miss the train ; 
but no ! they were all in time ; and she breathed freely and 
happily at length, seated in the carriage opposite to Mr. Bell, 
and whirling away past the well-known stations ; seeing the 
old south country towns and hamlets sleeping in the warm 
light of the pure sun, which gave a yet ruddier colour to 
their tiled roofs, so different to the cold slates of the north. 
Broods of pigeons hovered around these peaked, quaint 
gables, slowly settling here and there, and ruffling their soft, 
shiny feathers, as if exposing every fibre to the delicious 
warmth. There were few people about at the stations, it 
almost seemed as if they were too lazily content to wish to 
travel ; none of the bustle and stir that Margaret had noticed 

459 


North and South 

in her two journeys on the London and North-Western line. 
Later on in the year, this line of railway should be stirring 
and alive with rich pleasure-seekers ; but as to the constant 
going to and fro of busy tradespeople it would always be 
widely different from the northern lines. Here a spectator 
or two stood lounging at nearly every station, with his hands 
in his pockets, so absorbed in the simple act of watching, 
that it made the travellers wonder what he could find to do 
when the train whirled away, and only the blank of a rail- 
way, some sheds, and a distant field or two, were left for him 
to gaze upon. The hot air danced over the golden stillness 
of the land, farm after farm was left behind, each reminding 
Margaret of German idyls — of Hermann and Dorothea - and 
of Evangeline. From this waking dream she was roused. It 
was the place to leave the train and take the fly to Helstone. 
And now sharper feelings came shooting through her heart, 
whether pain or pleasure she could hardly tell. Every mile 
was redolent of associations, which she would not have 
missed for the world, but each of which made her cry upon 
“ the days that are no more,” with ineffable longing. The 
last time she had passed along this road was when she had 
left it with her father and mother — the day, the season, had 
been gloomy, and she herself hopeless, but they were there 
with her. Now she was alone, an orphan, and they, strangely, 
had gone away from her, and vanished from the face of the 
earth. It hurt her to see the Helstone road so flooded in 
the sunlight, and every turn and every familiar tree so pre- 
cisely the same in its summer glory as it had been in former 
years. Nature felt no change, and was ever young. 

Mr. Bell knew something of what would be passing 
through her mind, and wisely and kindly held his tongue. 
They drove up to the Lennard Arms ; half farm-house, half 
inn, standing a little apart from the road, as much as to say, 
that the host did not so depend on the custom of travellers, 
as to have to court it by any obtrusiveness ; they, rather, 
must seek him out. 

The house fronted the village green ; and right before it 
460 


Once and Now 

stood an immemorial lime-tree benched all round, in some 
hidden recesses of whose leafy wealth hung the grim escut- 
cheon of the Lennards. The door of the inn stood wide 
open, but there was no hospitable hurry to receive the 
travellers. When the landlady did appear — and they might 
have abstracted many an article first — she gave them a kind 
welcome, almost as if they had been invited guests, and 
apologised for her coming having been so delayed, by saying 
that it was hay-time, and the provisions for the men had to 
be sent a-field, and she had been too busy packing up the 
baskets to hear the noise of wheels over the road, which, 
since they had left the highway, ran over soft short turf. 

“ Why, bless me ! ” exclaimed she, as at the end of her 
apology a glint of sunshine showed her Margaret’s face, 
hitherto unobserved in that shady parlour. “ It’s Miss Hale, 
Jenny,” said she, running to the door, and calling to her 
daughter. “ Come here, come directly, it’s Miss Hale ! ” 
And then she went up to Margaret, and shook her hands 
with motherly fondness. 

“ And how are you all ? How’s the Vicar and Miss 
Dixon ? The Vicar above all ! God bless him ! We’ve 
never ceased to be sorry that he left.” 

Margaret tried to speak and tell her of her father’s death ; 
of her mother’s it was evident that Mrs. Purkis was aware, 
from her omission of her name. But she choked in the 
effort, and could only touch her deep mourning, and say the 
one word “ Papa.” 

“ Surely, sir, it’s never so ! ” said Mrs. Purkis, turning to 
Mr. Bell for confirmation of the sad suspicion that now 
entered her mind. “ There was a gentleman here in the 
spring — it might have been as long ago as last winter — who 
told us a deal of Mr. Hale and Miss Margaret ; and he said 
Mrs. Hale was gone, poor lady. But never a word of the 
Vicar’s being ailing ! ” 

“It is so, however,” said Mr. Bell. “He died quite 
suddenly, when on a visit to me at Oxford. He was a good 
man, Mrs. Purkis, and there’s many of us that might be 

461 


North and South 

thankful to have as calm an end as his. Come, Margaret, 
my dear ! Her father was my oldest friend, and she’s my 
god-daughter, so I thought we would just come down 
together and see the old place ; and I know of old you can 
give us comfortable rooms and a capital dinner. You don’t 
remember me I see, but my name is Bell, and once or twice 
when the parsonage has been full, I’ve slept here, and tasted 
your good ale.” 

“To be sure ; I ask your pardon ; but you see I was 
taken up with Miss Hale. Let me show you to a room, 
Miss Margaret, where you can take off your bonnet, and 
wash your face. It’s only this very morning I plunged 
some fresh-gathered roses head downward in the water-jug ; 
for, thought I, perhaps some one will be coming, and there’s 
nothing so sweet as spring- water scented by a musk or two. 
To think of the Yicar being dead ! Well, to be sure, we must 
all die ; only that gentleman said, he was quite picking up 
after his trouble about Mrs. Hale’s death.” 

“ Come down to me, Mrs. Purkis, after you have attended 
to Miss Hale. I want to have a consultation with you about 
dinner.” 

The little casement window in Margaret’s bed-chamber 
was almost filled up with rose and vine branches ; but, 
pushing them aside, and stretching a little out, she could 
see the tops of the parsonage chimneys above the trees, 
and distinguish many a well-known line through the 
leaves. 

“ Ay ! ” said Mrs. Purkis, smoothing down the bed, and 
despatching Jenny for an armful of lavender- scented towels, 
“ times is changed, Miss ; our new Yicar has seven children, 
and is building a nursery, ready for more, just out where the 
arbour and tool-house used to be in old times. And he has 
had new grates put in, and a plate-glass window in the 
drawing-room. He and his wife are stirring people, and 
have done a deal of good ; at least they say it’s doing good ; 
if it were not, I should call it turning things upside down 
for very little purpose. The new Yicar is a teetotaller, miss, 

462 


Once and Now 

and a magistrate, and his wife has a deal of receipts for 
economical cooking, and is for making bread without yeast ; 
and they both talk so much, and both at a time, that they 
knock one down as it were, and it’s not till they’re gone, 
and one’s a little at peace, that one can think that there 
were things one might have said on one’s own side of the 
question. He’ll be after the men’s cans in the hay-field, 
and peeping in; and then there’ll be an ado because it’s 
not ginger- beer, but I can’t help it. My mother and my 
grandmother before me sent good malt liquor to hay-makers, 
and took salts and senna when anything ailed them ; and I 
must e’en go on in their ways, though Mrs. Hepworth does 
want to give me comfits instead of medicine, which, as she 
says, is a deal pleasanter, only I’ve no faith in it. But I 
must go, miss, though I’m wanting to hear many a thing ; 
I’ll come back to you before long.” 

Mr. Bell had strawberries and cream, a loaf of brown 
bread, and a jug of milk (together with a Stilton cheese and 
a bottle of port for his own private refreshment), ready for 
Margaret on her coming downstairs ; and after this rustic 
luncheon they set out to walk, hardly knowing in what 
direction to turn, so many old familiar inducements were 
there in each. 

“ Shall we go past the vicarage ? ” asked Mr. Bell. 

“No, not yet. We will go this way, and make a round 
so as to come back by it,” replied Margaret. 

Here and there old trees had been felled the autumn 
before ; or a squatter’s roughly-built and decaying cottage 
had disappeared. Margaret missed them each and all, and 
grieved over them like old friends. They came past the 
spot where she and Mr. Lennox had sketched. The white, 
lightning-scarred trunk of the venerable beech, among whose 
roots they had sate down, was there no more ; the old man, 
the inhabitant of the ruinous cottage, was dead ; the cottage 
had been pulled down, and a new one, tidy and respectable, 
had been built in its stead. There was a small garden on 
the place where the beech-tree had been. 

463 


North and South 

“ I did not think I had been so old,” said Margaret after 
a pause of silence ; and she turned away sighing. 

“ Yes ! ” said Mr. Bell. “ It is the first changes among 
familiar things that make such a mystery of time to the 
young ; afterwards we lose the sense of the mysterious. I 
take changes in all I see as a matter of course. The 
instability of all human things is familiar to me ; to you . 
is new and oppressive.” 

“ Let us go on to see little Susan,” said Margaiet, 
drawing her companion up a grassy roadway, leading unde 
the shadow of a forest glade. 

“With all my heart, though I have not an idea who little 
Susan may be. But I have a kindness for all Susans, for 
Simple Susan’s sake.” 

“ My little Susan was disappointed when I left without 
wishing her good-bye: and it has been on my conscience 
ever since, that I gave her pain which a little more exertion 
on my part might have prevented. But it is a long way. 
Are you sure you will not be tired ? ” 

“ Quite sure. That is, if you don’t walk so fast. You 
see, here there are no views that can give one an excuse 
for stopping to take breath. You would think it romantic 
to be walking with a person * fat and scant o’ breath ’ if I 
were Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. Have compassion on 
my infirmities for his sake.” 

“ I will walk slower for your own sake. I like you 
twenty times better than Hamlet.” 

“ On the principle that a living ass is better than a dead 
lion ? ” 

“ Perhaps so. I don’t analyse my feelings.” 

“ I am content to take your liking me, without examining 
too curiously into the materials it is made of. Only we 
need not walk at a snail’s pace.” 

“ Very well. Walk at your own pace, and I will follow. 
Or stop still and meditate, like the Hamlet you compare 
yourself to, if I go too fast.” 

“ Thank you. But as my mother has not murdered my 

464 


Once and Now 

father, and afterwards married my uncle, I shouldn’t know 
what to think about, unless it were balancing the chances 
of our having a well-cooked dinner or not. What do you 
thin 1 - ? ” 

“'I am in good hopes. She used to be considered a 
famous cook as far as Helstone opinion went.” 

“ But have you considered the distraction of mind pro- 
c d by all this hay- making ? ” 

‘Margaret felt all Mr. Bell’s kindness in trying to make 
.eerful talk about nothing, to endeavour to prevent her 
irom thinking too curiously about the past. But she would 
lather have gone over these dear-loved walks in silence, if 
indeed she were not ungrateful enough to wish that she 
might have been alone. 

They reached the cottage where Susan’s widowed mother 
lived. Susan was not there. She was gone to the parochial 
school. Margaret was disappointed, and the poor woman 
saw it, and began to make a kind of apology. 

“Oh! it is quite right,” said Margaret. “I am very 
glad to hear it. I might have thought of it. Only she 
used to stop at home with you.” 

“ Yes, she did ; and I miss her sadly. I used to teach 
her what little I knew at nights. It were not much, to be 
sure. But she were getting such a handy girl, that I miss 
her sore. But she’s a deal above me in learning now.” 
And the mother sighed. 

“ I’m all wrong,” growled Mr. Bell. “ Don’t mind what 
I say. I’m a hundred years behind the world. But I should 
say, that the child was getting a better and simpler, and 
more natural education stopping at home, and helping her 
mother, and learning to read a chapter in the New Testament 
every night by her side, than from all the schooling under 
the sun.” 

Margaret did not want to encourage him to go on by 
replying to him, and so prolonging the discussion before 
the mother. So she turned to her and asked — 

How is old Betty Barnes ? ” 


North and South 

“ I don’t know,” said the woman, rather shortly. “ We'se 
not friends.” 

“ Why not ? ” asked Margaret, who had formerly been 
the peacemaker of the village. 

“ She stole my cat.” 

“ Did she know it was yours ? ” 

“ I don’t know. I reckon not.” 

“ Well ! could not you get it back again when you told 
her it was yours ? ” 

“ No ! for she’d burnt it.” 

“ Burnt it ? ” exclaimed both Margaret and Mr. Bell. 

“ Roasted it ! ” explained the woman. 

It was no explanation. By dint of questioning, Margaret 
extracted from her the horrible fact that Betty Barnes, 
having been induced by a gipsy fortune-teller to lend the 
latter her husband’s Sunday clothes, on promise of having 
them faithfully returned on the Saturday night before Good- 
man Barnes should have missed them, became alarmed by 
their non-appearance, and her consequent dread of her 
husband’s anger; and as, according to one of the savage 
country superstitions, the cries of a cat, in the agonies of 
being boiled or roasted alive, compelled (as it were) the 
powers of darkness to fulfil the wishes of the executioner, 
resort had been had to the charm. 

The poor woman evidently believed in its efficacy; her 
only feeling was indignation that her cat had been chosen 
out from all others for a sacrifice. Margaret listened in 
horror ; and endeavoured in vain to enlighten the woman’s 
mind; but she was obliged to give it up in despair. Step 
by step, she got the woman to admit certain facts, of which 
the logical connection and sequence was perfectly clear to 
Margaret; but, at the end, the bewildered woman simply 
repeated her first assertion, namely, that “ it were very 
cruel for sure, and she should not like to do it; but that 
there were nothing like it for giving a person what they 
wished for ; she had heard it all her life ; but it were very 
cruel for all that.” 


466 


Once and Now 

Margaret gave it up in despair, and walked away sick at 
heart. 

“ Yon are a good girl not to triumph over me,” said Mr. 
Bell.” 

“ How ? What do you mean ? ” 

“ I own I am wrong about schooling. Anything rather 
than have that child brought up in such practical paganism.” 

“ Oh ! I remember. Poor little Susan ! I must go and 
see her ; would you mind calling at the school ? ” 

“ Not a bit. I am curious to see something of the teach- 
ing she is to receive.” 

They did not speak much more, but thridded their way 
through many a bosky dell, whose soft green influence could 
not charm away the shock and the pain in Margaret’s heart, 
caused by the recital of such cruelty; a recital, too, the 
manner of which betrayed such utter want of imagination, 
and therefore of any sympathy with the suffering animal. 

The buzz of voices, like the murmur of a hive of busy 
human bees, made itself heard as soon as they emerged from 
the forest on the more open village-green on which the 
school was situated. The door was wide open, and they 
entered. A brisk lady in black, here, there, and everywhere, 
perceived them, and bade them welcome with somewhat of 
the hostess-air which, Margaret remembered, her mother was 
wont to assume, only in a more soft and languid manner, 
when any rare visitors strayed in to inspect the school. She 
knew at once it was the present Yicar’s wife, her mother’s 
successor ; and she would have drawn back from the inter- 
view had it been possible ; but in an instant she had con- 
quered this feeling, and modestly advanced, meeting many a 
bright glance of recognition, and hearing many a half- 
suppressed murmur of “ It’s Miss Hale.” 

The Yicar’s lady heard the name, and her manner at 
once became more kindly. Margaret wished she could have 
helped feeling that it also became more patronising. The 
lady held out a hand to Mr. Bell, with — 

“ Your father, I presume, Miss Hale. I see it by the 

467 


North and South 

likeness. I am sure I am very glad to see you, sir, and so 
will the Vicar be.” 

Margaret explained that it was not her father, and stam- 
mered out the fact of his death; wondering all the time how 
Mr. Hale could have borne coming to revisit Helstone, if it 
had been as the Vicar’s lady supposed. She did not hear 
what Mrs. Hepworth was saying, and left it to Mr. Bell to 
reply, looking round, meanwhile, for her old acquaintances. 

“ Ah ! I see you would like to take a class, Miss Hale. I 
know it by myself. First class stand up for a parsing lesson 
with Miss Hale.” 

Poor Margaret, whose visit was sentimental, not in any 
degree inspective, felt herself taken in ; but as in some way 
bringing her in contact with little eager faces, once well- 
known, and who had received the solemn rite of baptism 
from her father, she sate down, half losing herself in tracing 
out the changing features of the girls, and holding Susan’s 
hand for a minute or two, unobserved by all, while the first 
class sought for their books, and the Vicar’s lady went as 
near as a lady could towards holding Mr. Bell by the button, 
while she explained the Phonetic system to him, and gave 
him a conversation she had had with the inspector about it. 

Margaret bent over her book, and seeing nothing but 
that— hearing the buzz of children’s voices, old times rose 
up, and she thought of them, and her eyes filled with tears, 
till all at once there was a pause — one of the girls was 
stumbling over the apparently simple word “a,” uncertain 
what to call it. 

“A, an indefinite article,” said Margaret mildly. 

“ I beg your pardon,” said the Vicar’s wife, all eyes and 
ears ; “ but we are taught by Mr. Milsome to call ‘ a ’ an — 
who can remember ? ” 

“ An adjective absolute,” said half-a-dozen voices at once. 
And Margaret sate abashed. The children knew more than 
she did. Mr. Bell turned away, and smiled. 

Margaret spoke no more during the lesson. But after it 
was over, she went quietly round to one or two old favourites, 

468 


Once and Now 

and talked to them a little. They were growing out of chil- 
dren into great girls ; passing out of her recollection in their 
rapid development, as she, by her three years’ absence, was 
vanishing from theirs. Still she was glad to have seen them 
all again, though a tinge of sadness mixed itself with her 
pleasure. 

'1 When school was over for the day, it was yet early in 
the summer afternoon; and Mrs. Hepworth proposed to 
Margaret that she and Mr. Bell should accompany her to 
the parsonage and see the — the word “ improvements ” had 
half slipped out of her mouth, but she substituted the more 
cautious term “ alterations ” which the present Vicar was 
making. Margaret did not care a straw about seeing the 
alterations, which jarred upon her fond recollection of what 
her home had been ; but she longed to see the old place once 
more, even though she shivered away from the pain which 
she knew she should feel. 

The parsonage was so altered, both inside and out, that 
the real pain was less than she had anticipated. It was not 
like the same place. The garden, the grass-plat, formerly 
so daintily trim that even a stray rose-leaf seemed like a 
fleck on its exquisite arrangement and propriety, was strewed 
with children’s things ; a bag of marbles here, a hoop there ; 
a straw hat forced down upon a rose-tree as on a peg, to the 
destruction of a long, beautiful, tender branch laden with 
flowers, which in former days would have been trained up 
tenderly, as if beloved. The little square matted hall was 
equally filled with signs of merry, healthy, rough childhood. 

“ Ah ! ” said Mrs. Hepworth, “ you must excuse this 
untidiness, Miss Hale. When the nursery is finished, 1 
shall insist upon a little order. We are building a nursery 
out of your room, I believe. How did you manage, Miss 
Hale, without a nursery ? ” 

“ We were but two,” said Margaret. “ You have many 
children, I presume ? ” 

“ Seven. Look here ! we are throwing out a window to 
the road on this side. Mr. Hepworth is spending an immense 

469 


North and South 

deal of money on this house ; but really it was scarcely habi- 
table when we came — for so large a family as ours I mean, of 
course.” 

Every room in the house was changed, besides the one 
of which Mrs. Hepworth spoke, which had been Mr. Hale’s 
study formerly ; and where the green gloom and delicious 
quiet of the place had conduced, as he had said, to a habit .of 
meditation, but, perhaps, in some degree to the formation of 
a character more fitted for thought than action. The new 
window gave a view of the road, and had many advantages, 
as Mrs. Hepworth pointed out. From it the wandering sheep 
of her husband’s flock might be seen, who straggled to the 
tempting beer-house, unobserved as they might hope, but not 
unobserved in reality ; for the active Yicar kept his eye on 
the road, even during the composition of his most orthodox 
sermons, and had a hat and stick hanging ready at hand to 
seize, before sallying out after his parishioners, who had need 
of quick legs if they could take refuge in the “ Jolly Forester” 
before the teetotal Vicar had arrested them. The whole 
family were quick, brisk, loud- talking, kind-hearted, and not 
troubled with much delicacy of perception. 

Margaret feared that Mrs. Hepworth would find out that 
Mr. Bell was playing upon her, in the admiration he thought 
fit to express for everything that especially grated on his 
taste. But no ! she took it all literally, and with such good 
faith, that Margaret could not help remonstrating with him 
as they walked slowly away from the parsonage back to 
their inn. 

“ Don’t scold, Margaret. It was all because of you. If 
she had not shown you every change with such evident 
exultation in their superior sense, in perceiving what an im- 
provement this and that would be, I could have behaved 
well. But if you must go on preaching, keep it till after 
dinner, when it will send me to sleep, and help my 
digestion.” 

They were both of them tired, and Margaret herself so 
much so, that she was unwilling to go out as she had 

470 


Once and Now 

proposed to do, and have another ramble among the woods 
and fields so close to the home of her childhood. And, 
somehow, this visit to Helstone had not been all— had not 
been exactly what she had expected. 

There was change everywhere ; slight, yet pervading all. 
Households were changed by absence, or death, or marriage, 
or the natural mutations brought by days and months and 
years, which carry us on imperceptibly from childhood to 
youth, and thence through manhood to age, whence we drop 
like fruit, fully ripe, into the quiet mother earth. Places 
were changed — a tree gone here, a bough there, bringing in 
a long ray of light where no light was before — a road was 
trimmed and narrowed, and the green straggling pathway by 
its side enclosed and cultivated. A great improvement it 
was called ; but Margaret sighed over the old picturesqueness, 
the old gloom, and the grassy way-side of former days. 

She sate by the window on the little settle, sadly gazing 
out upon the gathering shades of night, which harmonised 
well with her pensive thought. Mr. Bell slept soundly, after 
his unusual exercise through the day. At last he was roused 
by the entrance of the tea-tray, brought in by a flushed- 
looking country- girl, who had evidently been finding some 
variety from her usual occupation of waiter, in assisting this 
day in the hay- field. 

“ Hallo ! Who’s there ? Where are we ? Who’s that — 
Margaret ? Oh, now I remember all. I could not imagine 
what woman was sitting there in such a doleful attitude, with 
her hands clasped straight out upon her knees, and her face 
looking so steadfastly before her. What were you looking 
at ? ” asked Mr. Bell, coming to the window, and standing 
behind Margaret. 

“ Nothing,” said she, rising up quickly, and speaking as 
cheerfully as she could at a moment’s notice. 

“ Nothing indeed ! A bleak back-ground of trees, some 
white linen hung out on the sweet-briar hedge, and a great 
waft of damp air. Shut the window, and come in and make 
tea.” 


47i 


North and South 

Margaret was silent for some time. She played with her 
tea-spoon, and did not attend particularly to what Mr. Bell 
said. He contradicted her, and she took the same sort of 
smiling notice of his opinion as if he had agreed with her. 
Then she sighed, and putting down her spoon, she began, 
apropos of nothing at all, and in the high-pitched voice which 
usually shows that the speaker has been thinking for some 
time on the subject that they wish to introduce — 

“ Mr. Bell, you remember what we were saying about 
Frederick last night, don’t you ? ” 

“ Last night. Where was I ? Oh, I remember ! Why, it 
seems a week ago. Yes, to be sure, I recollect we talked 
about him, poor fellow.” 

“ Yes — and do you not remember that Mr. Lennox spoke 
about his having been in England about the time of dear 
mamma’s death ? ” asked Margaret, her voice now lower than 
usual. 

“ I recollect. I hadn’t heard of it before.” 

“ And I thought — I always thought that papa had told 
you about it.” 

“ No ! he never did. But what about it, Margaret ? ” 

“ I want to tell you of something I did that was very 
wrong, about that time,” said Margaret, suddenly looking up 
at him with het clear, honest eyes. 

“ I told a lie ! ” and her face became scarlet. 

“ True, that was bad I own ; not but what I have told 
a pretty round number in my life, not all in downright words, 
as I suppose you did, but in actions, or in some shabby 
circumlocutory way, leading people either to disbelieve the 
truth, or believe a falsehood. You know who is the 
father of lies, Margaret ? Well ! a great number of folk, 
thinking themselves very good, have odd sorts of connection 
with lies, left-hand marriages, and second-cousins-once- 
removed. The tainting blood of falsehood runs through us all. 
I should have guessed you as far from it as most people. 
What ! crying, child ? Nay, now we’ll not talk of it, if it ends 
in this way. I dare say you have been sorry for it, and that 

472 


Once and Now 

you won’t do it again, and it’s long ago now, and in short I 
want you to be very cheerful, and not very sad, this evening.” 

Margaret wiped her eyes and tried to talk about something 
else, but suddenly she burst out afresh. 

“Please, Mr. Bell, let me tell you about it— you could 
perhaps help me a little ; no, not help me, but if you knew the 
truth, perhaps you could put me to rights — that is not it, after 
all,” said she, in despair at not being able to express herself 
more exactly as she wished. 

Mr. Bell’s whole manner changed. “ Tell me all about it, 
child,” said he. 

“ It’s a long story ; but when Fred came, mamma was 
very ill, and I was undone with anxiety, and afraid, too, 
that I might have drawn him into danger ; and we had an 
alarm just after her death, for Dixon met some one in 
Milton — a man called Leonards — who had known Fred, 
and who seemed to owe him a grudge, or at any rate to be 
tempted by the recollection of the reward offered for his 
apprehension; and, with this new fright, I thought I had 
better hurry off Fred to London, where, as you would 
understand from what we said the other night, he was to go 
to consult Mr. Lennox as to his chances if he stood a trial. So 
we — that is, he and I — went to the railway station ; it was 
one evening, and it was just getting rather dusk, but still 
light enough to recognise and be recognised ; and we were too 
early, and went out to walk in a field just close by ; I was 
always in a panic about this Leonards, who was, I knew, 
somewhere in the neighbourhood ; and then, when we were 
in the field, the low, red sunlight just in my face, some one 
came by on horseback in the road just below the field- stile 
by which we stood. I saw him look at me, but I did not 
know who it was at first, the sun was so in my eyes, but in 
an instant the dazzle went off, and I saw it was Mr. Thornton, 
and we bowed ” 

“ And he saw Frederick of course,” said Mr. Bell, helping 
her on with her story as he thought. 

“ Yes ; and then at the station a man came up — tipsy and 
473 


North and South 


reeling — and he tried to collar Fred, and over-balanced him- 
self as Fred wrenched himself away, and fell over the edge 
of the platform ; not far, not deep ; not above three feet ; but 
oh ! Mr. Bell, somehow that fall killed him ! ” 

“ How awkward ! It was this Leonards, I suppose. And 
how did Fred get off ? ” 

“ Oh ! he went off immediately after the fall, which we 
never thought could have done the poor fellow any harm, it 
seemed so slight an injury.” 

“ Then he did not die directly ? ” 

“ No ! not for two or three days. And then — oh, Mr. 
Bell ! now comes the bad part,” said she, nervously twining 
her fingers together. “ A police inspector came and taxed 
me with having been the companion of the young man, whose 
push or blow had occasioned Leonards’ death ; that was a 
false accusation, you know, but we had not heard that Fred 
had sailed; he might still be in London and liable to be 
arrested on this false charge, and his identity with the 
Lieutenant Hale, accused of causing that mutiny, discovered ; 
he might be shot ; all this flashed through my mind, and I 
said it was not me. I was not at the railway station that 
night. I knew nothing about it. I had no conscience or 
thought but to save Frederick.” 

“ I say it was right. I should have done the same. You 
forgot yourself in thought for another. I hope I should have 
done the same.” 

“No, you would not. It was wrong, disobedient, faith- 
less. At that very time Fred was safely out of England, and 
in my blindness I forgot that there was another witness who 
could testify to my being there.” 

“ Who ? ” 

“ Mr. Thornton. You know he had seen me close to the 
station ; we had bowed to each other.” 

“ Well ! he would know nothing of this riot, about the 
drunken fellow’s death. I suppose the inquiry never came 
to anything.” 

“ No ! the proceedings they had begun to talk about 
474 


Once and Now 

on the inquest were stopped. Mr. Thornton did know all 
about it. He was a magistrate, and he found out that it was 
not the fall that had caused the death. But not before he 
knew what I had said. Oh, Mr. Bell ! ” She suddenly 
covered her face with her hands, as if wishing to hide herself 
from the presence of the recollection. 

“ Did you have any explanation with him ? Did you ever 
tell him the strong, instinctive motive ? ” 

“ The instinctive want of faith, and clutching at a sin 
to keep myself from sinking,” said she bitterly. “ No ! 
How could I ? He knew nothing of Frederick. To put 
myself to rights in his good opinion, was I to tell him 
the secrets of our family, involving, as they seemed to do, 
the chances of poor Frederick’s entire exculpation ? Fred’s 
last words had been to enjoin me to keep his visit a secret 
from all. You see, papa never told even you. No ! I could 
bear the shame — I thought I could at least. I did bear it. 
Mr. Thornton has never respected me since.” 

“ He respects you, I am sure,” said Mr. Bell. “ To be 

sure it accounts a little for But he always speaks of 

you with regard and esteem, though now I understand 
certain reservations in his manner.” 

Margaret did not speak ; did not attend to what Mr. Bell 
went on to say ; lost all sense of it. By-and-by she said — 
“Will you tell me what you refer to about ‘ reservations ’ 
in his manner of speaking of me?” 

“ Oh ! simply he has annoyed me by not joining in my 
praises of you. Like an old fool, I thought that every one 
would have the same opinions as I had ; and he evidently 
could not agree with me. I was puzzled at the time. But 
he must be perplexed, if the affair has never been in the 
least explained. There was first your walking out with a 

young man in the dark ” 

“ But it was my brother ! ” said Margaret, surprised. 

“ True. But how was he to know that ? ” 

“ I don’t know. I never thought of anything of that kind,” 
said Margaret, reddening, and looking hurt and offended. 

475 


North and South 

“ And perhaps he never would, but for the lie — which, 
under the circumstances, I maintain, was necessary.” 

“ It was not. I know it now. I bitterly repent it.” 

There was a long pause of silence. Margaret was the 
first to speak. 

“ I am not likely ever to see Mr. Thornton again ” — and 
there she stopped. 

“ There are many things more unlikely, I should say,” 
replied Mr. Bell. 

“ But I believe I never shall. Still, somehow one does 
not like to have sunk so low in — in a friend’s opinion as 
I have done in his.” Her eyes were full of tears, but her 
voice was steady, and Mr. Bell was not looking at her. 
“ And now that Frederick has given up all hope, and almost 
all wish of ever clearing himself, and returning to England, 
it would be only doing myself justice to have all this ex- 
plained. If you please, and if you can, if there is a good 
opportunity (don’t force an explanation upon him, pray), but 
if you can, will you tell him the whole circumstances, and 
tell him also that I gave you leave to do so, because I felt 
that for papa’s sake I should not like to lose his respect, 
though we may never be likely to meet again ? ” 

“ Certainly. I think he ought to know. I do not like 
you to rest even under a shadow of an impropriety; he 
would not know what to think of seeing you alone with a 
young man.” 

“ As for that,” said Margaret, rather haughtily, “ I hold 
it is Honi soil qui mal y pense. Yet still I should choose to 
have it explained, if any natural opportunity for easy ex- 
planation occurs. But it is not to clear myself of any 
suspicion of improper conduct that I wish to have him told 
— if I thought that he had suspected me, I should not care 
for his good opinion — no ! it is that he may learn how I was 
tempted, and how I fell into the snare; why I told that 
falsehood, in short.” 

“ Which I don’t blame you for. It is no partiality of 
mine, I assure you.” 


476 


Once and Now 

“ What other people may think of the rightness or wrong- 
ness is nothing in comparison to my own deep knowledge, 
my innate conviction that it was wrong. But we will not 
talk of that any more, if you please. It is done — my sin 
is sinned. I have now to put it behind me, and be truthful 
for evermore, if I oan.” 

“ Very well. If you like to be uncomfortable and morbid, 
be so. I always keep my conscience as tight shut up as a 
jack-in-a-box, for when it jumps into existence it surprises 
me by its size. So I coax it down again, as the fisherman 
coaxed the genie. ‘ Wonderful/ says I, ‘ to think that you 
have been concealed so long, and in so small a compass, that 
I really did not know of your existence. Pray, sir, instead 
of growing larger and larger every instant, and bewildering 
me with your misty outlines, would you once more compress 
yourself into your former dimensions ? * And when I’ve got 
him down, don’t I clap the seal on the vase, and take good 
care how I open it again, and how I go against Solomon, 
wisest of men, who confined him there ! ” 

But it was no smiling matter to Margaret. She hardly 
attended to what Mr. Bell was saying. Her thoughts ran 
upon the idea, before entertained, but which now had 
assumed the strength of a conviction, that Mr. Thornton no 
longer held his former good opinion of her — that he was 
disappointed in her. 

She did not feel as if any explanation could ever reinstate 
her — not in his love, for that and any return on her part she 
had resolved never to dwell upon, and she kept rigidly to her 
resolution — but in the respect and high regard which she had 
hoped would have ever made him willing, in the spirit of 
Gerald Griffin’s beautiful fines, 

“ To turn and look back when thou hearest 
The sound of my name.” 

She kept choking and swallowing all the time that she 
thought about it. She tried to comfort herself with the idea, 
that what he imagined her to be did not alter the fact of 

47.7 


North and South 

what she was. But it was a truism, a phantom, and broke 
down under the weight of her regret. She had twenty- 
questions on the tip of her tongue to ask Mr. Bell, but not 
one of them did she utter. Mr. Bell thought that she was 
tired, and sent her early to her room, where she sate long 
hours by the open window, gazing out on the purple dome 
above, where the stars arose, and twinkled and disappeared 
behind the great umbrageous trees before she went to bed. 
All night long too, there burnt a little light on earth : a 
candle in her old bed-room, which was the nursery with the 
present inhabitants of the parsonage, until the new one should 
be built. 

A sense of change, of individual nothingness, of per- 
plexity and disappointment, overpowered Margaret. Nothing 
had been the same ; and this slight, all-pervading instability, 
had given her greater pain than if all had been too entirely 
changed for her to recognise it. 

“ I begin to understand now what heaven must be — and, 
oh ! the grandeur and repose of the words — ‘ The same 
yesterday, to-day, and for ever.’ Everlasting ! ‘ From 

everlasting to everlasting, Thou art God.’ That sky above 
me looks as though it could not change, and yet it will. 
I am so tired — so tired of being whirled on through all these 
phases of my life, in which nothing abides by me, no 
creature, no place ; it is like the circle in which the victims 
of earthly passion eddy continually. I am in the mood in 
which women of another religion take the veil. I seek 
heavenly steadfastness in earthly monotony. If I were 
a Roman Catholic and could deaden my heart, stun it with 
some great blow, I might become a nun. But I should pine 
after my kind; no, not my kind, for love for my species 
could never fill my heart to the utter exclusion of love for 
individuals. Perhaps it ought to be so, perhaps not; I 
cannot decide to-night.” 

Wearily she went to bed, wearily she arose in four or 
five hours’ time. But with the morning came hope, and 
a brighter view of things. 


478 


Once and Now 

“ After all it is right,” said she, hearing the voices of 
children at play while she was dressing. “ If the world 
stood still, it would retrograde and become corrupt, if that is 
not Irish. Looking out of myself, and my own painful sense 
of change, the progress of all around me is right and neces- 
sary. I must not think so much of how circumstances affect 
me myself, but how they affect others, if I wish to have 
a right judgment, or a hopeful, trustful heart.” And with 
a smile ready in her eyes to quiver down to her lips, she 
went into the parlour and greeted Mr. Bell. 

“ Ah, Missy ! you were up late last night, and so you’re 
late this morning. Now I’ve got a little piece of news for 
you. What do you think of an invitation to dinner? a 
morning call, literally in the dewy morning. Why, I’ve had 
the Vicar here already, on his way to the school. How 
much the desire of giving our hostess a teetotal lecture for 
the benefit of the haymakers, had to do with his earliness, 
I don’t know ; but here he was, when I came down just 
before nine ; and we are asked to dine there to-day.” 

“ But Edith expects me back — I cannot go,” said 
Margaret, thankful to have so good an excuse. 

“ Yes ! I know ; so I told him. I thought you would 
not want to go. Still it is open, if you would like it.” 

“ Oh, no ! ” said Margaret. “ Let us keep to our plan. 
Let us start at twelve. It is very good and kind of them ; 
but indeed I could not go.” 

“Very well. Don’t fidget yourself, and I’ll arrange 
it all.” 

Before they left Margaret stole round to the back of the 
Vicarage garden, and gathered a little straggling piece of 
honeysuckle. She would not take a flower the day before, 
for fear of being observed, and her motives and feelings 
commented upon. But as she returned across the common, 
the place was reinvested with the old enchanting atmo- 
sphere. 

The common sounds of life were more musical there than 
anywhere else in the whole world, the light more golden, the 

479 


North and South 

life more tranquil and full of dreamy delight. As Margaret 
remembered her feelings yesterday, she said to herself — 
“And I too change perpetually — now this, now that — 
now disappointed and peevish because all is not exactly as 
I had pictured it, and now suddenly discovering that the 
reality is far more beautiful than I had imagined it. Oh, 
Helstone ! I shall never love any place like you.” 

A few days afterwards, she had found her level, and 
decided that she was very glad to have been there, and that 
she had seen it again, and that to her it would always be the 
prettiest spot in the world, but that it was so full of associa- 
tions with former days, and especially with her father and 
mother that, if it were all to come over again, she should 
shrink back from such another visit as that which she had 
paid with Mr. Bell. 


CHAPTEE XLYII 

SOMETHING WANTING 

“ Experience, like a pale musician, holds 
A dulcimer of patience in his hand ; 

Whence harmonies we cannot understand, 

Of God’s will in His worlds, the strain unfolds 
In sad, perplexed minors.” 

Mrs. Browning. 

About this time Dixon returned from Milton, and assumed 
her post as Margaret’s maid. She brought endless pieces 
of Milton gossip : How Martha had gone to live with Miss 
Thornton, on the latter’s marriage ; with an account of the 
bridesmaids, dresses and breakfasts, at that interesting cere- 
mony ; how people thought that Mr. Thornton had made too 
grand a wedding of it, considering he had lost a deal by the 
strike, and had had to pay so much for the failure of his 
contracts ; how little money articles of furniture — long 
cherished by Dixon — had fetched at the sale, which was a 

480 


Something Wanting 

shame, considering how rich folks were at Milton ; how Mrs. 
Thornton had come one day and got two or three good 
bargains, and Mr. Thornton had come the next, and in his 
desire to obtain one or two things, had bid against himself, 
much to the enjoyment of the bystanders ; so, as Dixon ob- 
served, that made things even : if Mrs.. Thornton paid too 
little, Mr. Thornton paid too much. Mr. Bell had sent all 
sorts of orders about the books ; there was no understanding 
him, he was so particular ; if he had come himself it would 
have been all right, but letters always were and always will 
be more puzzling than they are worth. 

Dixon had not much to tell about the Higginses. Her 
memory had an aristocratic bias, and was very treacherous 
whenever she tried to recall any circumstance connected 
with those below her in life. Nicholas was very well, she 
believed. He had been several times at the house asking for 
news of Miss Margaret — the only person who ever did ask, 
except once Mr. Thornton. And Mary ? oh ! of course she 
was very well, a great, stout, slatternly thing ! She did hear, 
or perhaps it was only a dream of hers, though it would be 
strange if she had dreamt of such people as the Higginses, 
that Mary had gone to work at Mr. Thornton’s mill, because 
her father wished her to know how to cook ; but what non- 
sense that could mean she didn’t know. Margaret rather 
agreed with her that the story was incoherent enough to be 
like a dream. Still it was pleasant to have some one now 
with whom she could talk of Milton, and Milton people. 
Dixon was not over- fond of the subject, rather wishing to 
leave that part of her life in shadow. She liked much more 
to dwell upon speeches of Mr. Bell’s, which had suggested 
an idea to her of what was really his intention — making 
Margaret his heiress. But her young lady gave her no 
encouragement, nor in any way gratified her insinuating 
inquiries, however disguised in the form of suspicions or 
assertions. 

All this time Margaret had a strange undefined longing 
to hear that Mr. Bell had gone to pay one of bis business 

481 2 i 


North and South 

visits to Milton; for it had been well understood between 
them, at the time of their conversation at Helstone, that the 
explanation she had desired should only be given to Mr. 
Thornton by word of mouth, and even in that manner should 
be in nowise forced upon him. 

Mr. Bell was no great correspondent ; but he wrote from 
time to time long or short letters, as the humour took him ; 
and, although Margaret was not conscious of any definite 
hope, on receiving them, yet she always put away his notes 
with a little feeling of disappointment. He was not going to 
Milton ; he said nothing about it, at any rate. Well ! she 
must be patient. Sooner or later the mists would be cleared 
away. Mr. Bell’s letters were hardly like his usual self ; 
they were short, and complaining, with every now and then 
a little touch of bitterness that was unusual.. He did not 
look forward to the future ; he rather seemed to regret the 
past, and be weary of the present. Margaret fancied that he 
could not be well ; but in answer to some inquiry of hers as 
to his health, he sent her a short note, saying there was 
an old-fashioned complaint called the spleen ; that he was 
suffering from that, and it was for her to decide if it was 
more mental or physical ; but that he should like to indulge 
himself in grumbling, without being obliged to send a bulletin 
every time. 

In consequence of this note, Margaret made no more 
inquiries about his health. 

One day Edith let out accidentally a fragment of a con- 
versation which she had had with Mr. Bell, when he was 
last in London, which possessed Margaret with the idea that 
he had some notion of taking her to pay a visit to her 
brother and new sister-in-law, at Cadiz, in the autumn. She 
questioned and cross-questioned Edith till the latter was 
weary, and declared that there was nothing more to re- 
member ; all he had said was that he half thought he should 
go, and hear for himself what Frederick had to say about 
the mutiny; and that it would be a good opportunity for 
Margaret to become acquainted with her new sister-in-law ; 

482 


Something Wanting 

that he always went somewhere during the Long Vacation, 
and did not see why he should not go to Spain as well 
as anywhere else. That was all. Edith hoped Margaret 
did not want to leave them, that she was so anxious about 
all this. And then, having nothing else particular to do, 
she cried, and said that she knew she cared much more for 
Margaret than Margaret did for her. Margaret comforted 
her as well as she could, but she could hardly explain to 
her how this idea of Spain, mere chateau en Espagne as it 
might be, charmed and delighted her. Edith was in the 
mood to think that any pleasure enjoyed away from her 
was a tacit affront, or at best a proof of indifference. So 
Margaret had to keep her pleasure to herself, and could only 
let it escape by the safety-valve of asking Dixon, when she 
dressed for dinner, if she would not like to see Master 
Frederick and his new wife very much indeed ? 

“ She’s a Papist, Miss, isn’t she ? ” 

“ I believe — oh yes, certainly ! ” said Margaret, a little 
damped for an instant at this recollection. 

“ And they live in a Popish country ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Then I’m afraid I must say, that my soul is dearer to 
me than even Master Frederick, his own dear self. I should 
be in a perpetual terror, Miss, lest I should be converted.” 

“ Oh,” said Margaret, “ I do not know that I am going ; 
and if I go, I am not such a fine lady as to be unable to 
travel without you. No ! dear old Dixon, you shall have a 
long holiday, if we go. But I’m afraid it is a long ‘ if.’ ” 

Now Dixon did not like this speech. In the first place, 
she did not like Margaret’s trick of calling her “ dear old 
Dixon ” whenever she was particularly demonstrative. She 
knew that Miss Hale was apt to call all people that she 
liked “ old,” as a sort of term of endearment ; but Dixon 
always winced away from the application of the word to 
herself, who, being not much past fifty, was, she thought, 
in the very prime of life. Secondly, she did not like being 
so easily taken at her word ; she had, with all her terror, a 

483 


North and South 

lurking curiosity about Spain, the Inquisition, and Popish 
mysteries. So, after clearing her throat, as if to show her 
willingness to do away with difficulties, she asked Miss Hale 
whether she thought, if she took care never to see a priest, 
or enter into one of their churches, there would be so very 
much danger of her being converted ? Master Frederick, to 
be sure, had gone over unaccountably. 

“ I fancy it was love that first predisposed him to con- 
version,” said Margaret, sighing. 

“ Indeed, Miss ! ” said Dixon ; “ well ! I can preserve 
myself from priests, and from churches ; but love steals in 
unawares ! I think it’s as well I should not go.” 

Margaret was afraid of letting her mind run too much 
upon this Spanish plan. But it took off her thoughts from 
too impatiently dwelling upon her desire to have all explained 
to Mr. Thornton. 

Mr. Bell appeared for the present to be stationary at 
Oxford, and to have no immediate purpose of going to 
Milton; and some secret restraint seemed to hang over 
Margaret, and prevent her from even asking, or alluding 
again to any probability of such a visit on his part. Nor 
did she feel at liberty to name what Edith had told her of 
the idea he had entertained — it might be but for five minutes 
— of going to Spain. He had never named it at Helstone, 
during all that sunny day of leisure ; it was very probably 
but the fancy of a moment— but, if it were true, what a 
bright outlet it would be from the monotony of her present 
life, which was beginning to fall upon her. 

One of the great pleasures of Margaret’s life at this time 
was in Edith’s boy. He was the pride and plaything of both 
father and mother, as long as he was good ; but he had a 
strong will of his own, and as soon as he burst out into one 
of his stormy passions, Edith would throw herself back in 
despair and fatigue, and sigh out, “ Oh dear, what shall I do 
with him ! Do, Margaret, please ring the bell for Hanley.” 

But Margaret almost liked him better in these manifes- 
tations of character than in his good, blue-sashed moods. 

484 


Something Wanting 

She would carry him off into a room, where they two alone 
battled it out ; she with a firm power which subdued him 
into peace, while every sudden charm and wile she possessed 
was exerted on the side of right, until he would rub his little 
hot and tear-smeared face all over hers, kissing and caressing 
till he often fell asleep in her arms or on her shoulder. Those 
were Margaret’s sweetest moments. They gave her a taste 
of the feeling that she believed would be denied to her for 
ever. 

Mr. Henry Lennox added a new and not disagreeable 
element to the course of the household life by his frequent 
presence. Margaret thought him colder, if more brilliant 
than formerly ; but there were strong intellectual tastes, and 
much and varied knowledge, which gave flavour to the other- 
wise rather insipid conversation. Margaret saw glimpses in 
him of a slight contempt for his brother and sister-in-law, 
and for their mode of life, which he seemed to consider as 
frivolous and purposeless. He once or twice spoke to his 
brother, in Margaret’s presence, in a pretty sharp tone of 
inquiry as to whether he meant entirely to relinquish his 
profession ; and on Captain Lennox’s reply, that he had 
quite enough to live upon, she had seen Mr. Lennox’s curl 
of the lip as he said, “ And is that all you live for ? ” 

But the brothers were much attached to each other, in 
the way that any two persons are, when the one is cleverer 
and always leads the other, and this last is patiently content 
to be led. Mr. Lennox was pushing on in his profession ; 
cultivating, with profound calculation, all those connections 
that might eventually be of service to him; keen- sighted, 
far-seeing, intelligent, sarcastic, and proud. 

Since the one long conversation relating to Frederick’s 
affairs, which she had with him the first evening in Mr. 
Bell’s presence, she had had no great intercourse with him, 
further than that which arose out of their close relations 
with the same household. But this was enough to wear off 
the shyness on her side, and any symptoms of mortified 
pride and vanity on his. They met continually, of course, 

485 


North and South 

but she thought that he rather avoided being alone with 
her ; she fancied that he, as well as she, perceived that they 
had drifted strangely apart from their former anchorage, 
side by side, in many of their opinions, and all their tastes. 

And yet, when he had spoken unusually well, or with 
remarkable epigrammatic point, she felt that his eye sought 
the expression of her countenance first of all, if but for an 
instant ; and that, in the family intercourse which constantly 
threw them together, her opinion was the one to which he 
listened with a deference — the more complete, because it 
was reluctantly paid, and concealed as much as possible. 


CHAPTER XLVIII 
“ ne’er to be found again ” 

“ My own, my father’s friend ! 

I- cannot part with thee ! 

I ne’er have shown, thou ne’er hast known, 

How dear thou art to me.” 

Anon. 

The elements of the dinner-parties which Mrs. Lennox gave, 
were these ; her friends contributed the beauty, Captain 
Lennox the easy knowledge of the subjects of the day; and 
Mr. Henry Lennox, and the sprinkling of rising men who 
were received as his friends, brought the wit, the cleverness, 
the keen and extensive knowledge of which they knew well 
enough how to avail themselves without seeming pedantic, 
or burdening the rapid flow of conversation. 

These dinners were delightful ; but even here Margaret’s 
dissatisfaction found her out. Every talent, every feeling, 
every acquirement ; nay, even every tendency towards virtue, 
was used up as materials for fireworks ; the hidden, sacred 
fire exhausted itself in sparkle and crackle. They talked 
about art in a merely sensuous way, dwelling on outside 

486 


“ Ne’er to be found again ” 

effects, instead of allowing themselves to learn what it has 
to teach. They lashed themselves up into an enthusiasm 
about high subjects in company, and never thought about 
them when they were alone ; they squandered their capabilities 
of appreciation into a mere flow of appropriate words. 

One day, after the gentlemen had come up into the 
drawing-room', Mr. Lennox drew near to Margaret, and 
addressed her in almost the first voluntary words he had 
spoken to her since she had returned to live in Harley 
Street. 

“You did not look pleased at what Shirley was saying at 
dinner.” 

“ Didn’t I ? My face must be very expressive,” replied 
Margaret. 

“ It always was. It has not lost the trick of being 
eloquent.” 

“ I did not like,” said Margaret hastily, “ his way of 
advocating what he knew to be wrong — so glaringly wrong — 
even in jest.” 

“ But it was very clever. How every word told 1 Do 
you remember the happy epithets ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ And despise them, you would like to add. Pray don’t 
scruple, though he is my friend.” 

“ There ! that is the exact tone in you that ” she 

stopped short. 

He listened for a moment to see if she would finish her 
sentence; but she only reddened, and turned away; before 
she did so, however, she heard him say, in a very low, clear 
voice — ’ 

“ If my tones, or modes of thought, are what you dislike, 
will you do me the justice to tell me so, and so give me the 
chance of learning to please you ? ” 

All these weeks there was no intelligence of Mr. Bell’s 
going to Milton. He had spoken of it at Helstone as of a 
journey which he might have to take in a very short time 
from then; but he must have transacted his business by 

487 


North and South 

writing, Margaret thought, ere now ; and she knew that if he 
could, he would avoid going to a place which he disliked, 
and moreover would little understand the secret importance 
which she affixed to the explanation that could only be given 
by word of mouth. She knew that he would feel that it was 
necessary that it should be done ; but, whether in summer, 
autumn, or winter, it would signify very little. 

It was now August, and there had been no mention of 
the Spanish journey to which he had alluded to Edith, and 
Margaret tried to reconcile herself to the fading away of this 
illusion. 

But one morning she received a letter, saying that next 
week he meant to come up to town ; he wanted to see her 
about a plan which he had in his head; and, moreover, he 
intended to treat himself to a little doctoring, as he had 
begun to come round to her opinion, that it would be 
pleasanter to think that his health was more in fault than 
he, when he found himself irritable and cross. There was 
altogether a tone of forced cheerfulness in the letter, as 
Margaret noticed afterwards ; but at the time her attention 
was taken up by Edith’s exclamations. 

“ Coming up to town ! Oh dear ! and I am so worn out 
by the heat that I don’t believe I have strength enough in 
me for another dinner. Besides, everybody has left but our 
dear stupid selves, who can’t settle where to go to. There 
would be nobody to meet him.” 

“ I’m sure he would much rather come and dine with us 
quite alone than with the most agreeable strangers you could 
pick up. Besides, if he is not well he won’t wish for invita- 
tions. I am glad he has owned it at last. I was ‘sure he 
was ill from the whole tone of his letters, and yet he would 
not answer me when I asked him, and I had no third person 
to whom I could apply for news.” 

“ Oh ! he is not very ill, or he would not think of 
Spain.” 

“ He never mentions Spain.” 

“ No ! but his plan that is to be proposed evidently 
488 


“ Ne’er to be found again ” 

relates to that. But would you really go in such weather 
as this ? ” 

“ Oh, it will get cooler every day. Yes ! Think of it. I 
am only afraid I have thought and wished too much — in 
that absorbing, wilful way which is sure to be disappointed — 
or else gratified, to the letter, while in the spirit it gives no 
pleasure.” 

“ But that’s superstitious, I’m sure, Margaret.” 

“ No, I don’t think it is. Only it ought to warn me, and 
check me from giving way to such passionate wishes. It is 
a sort of ‘ Give me children, or else I die.’ I’m afraid my 
cry is, ‘ Let me go to Cadiz, or else I die.’ ” 

“ My dear Margaret ! You’ll be persuaded to stay there ; 
and then what shall I do ? Oh ! I wish I could find some- 
body for you to marry here, that I could be sure of you ! ” 

“ I shall never marry.” 

“ Nonsense, and double nonsense ! Why, as Sholto 
says, you’re such an attraction to the house, and he knows 
ever so many men who will be glad to visit here next year 
for your sake.” 

Margaret drew herself up haughtily. “Do you know, 
Edith, I sometimes think your Corfu life has taught 
you ” 

“Well?” 

“Just a shade or two of coarseness.” 

Edith began to sob so bitterly, and to declare so vehe- 
mently that Margaret had lost all love for her, and no longer 
looked upon her as a friend, that Margaret came to think 
that she had expressed too harsh an opinion for the relief of 
her own wounded pride, and ended by being Edith’s slave 
for the rest of the day ; while that little lady, overcome by 
wounded feeling, lay like a victim on the sofa, heaving 
occasionally a profound sigh, till at last she fell asleep. 

Mr. Bell did not make his appearance even on the day to 
which he had for a second time deferred his visit. The next 
morning there came a letter from Wallis, his servant, stating 
that his master had not been feeling well for some time, 

489 


North and South 

which had been the true reason of his putting off his journey ; 
and that, at the very time when he should have set out for 
London, he had been seized with an apoplectic fit ; it was, 
indeed, Wallis added, the opinion of the medical men — that 
he could not survive the night ; and more than probable, 
that by the time Miss Hale received this letter his poor 
master would be no more. 

Margaret received this letter at breakfast-time, and turned 
very pale as she read it ; then silently putting it into Edith’s 
hands, she left the room. 

Edith was terribly shocked as she read it, and cried in a 
sobbing, frightened, childish way, much to her husband’s 
distress. Mrs. Shaw was breakfasting in her own room ; and 
upon him devolved the task of reconciling his wife to the 
near contact into which she seemed to be brought with 
death, for the first time that she could remember in her life. 

Here was a man who was to have dined with them 
to-day lying dead or dying instead ! It was some time 
before she could think of Margaret. Then she started up, 
and followed her upstairs into her room. Dixon was packing 
up a few toilette articles, and Margaret was hastily putting 
on her bonnet, shedding tears all the time, and her hands 
trembling so that she could hardly tie the strings. 

“ Oh, dear .Margaret ! how shocking ! What are you 
doing ? Are you going out ? Sholto would telegraph or do 
anything you like.” 

“ I am going to Oxford. There is a train in half-an-hour. 
Dixon has offered to go with me, but I could have gone by 
myself. I must see him again. Besides, he may be better, 
and want some care. He has been like a father to me. 
Don’t stop me, Edith.” 

“ But I must. Mamma won’t like it at all. Come and 
ask her about it, Margaret. You don’t know where you’re 
going. I should not mind if he had a house of his own; 
but in his Fellow’s rooms ! Come to mamma, and do ask 
her before you go. It will not take a minute.” 

Margaret yielded, and lost her train. In the suddenness 
490 


“ Ne’er to be found again ” 

of the event, Mrs. Shaw became bewildered and hysterical, 
and so the precious time slipped by. But there was another 
train in a couple of hours ; and after various discussions on 
propriety and impropriety, it was decided that Captain 
Lennox should accompany Margaret, as the one thing to 
which she was constant was her resolution to go, alone or 
otherwise, by the next train, whatever might be said of the 
propriety or impropriety of the step. 

Her father’s friend, her own friend, was lying at the 
point of death ; and the thought of this came upon her with 
such vividness, that she was surprised herself at the firmness 
with which she asserted something of her right to inde- 
pendence of action; and five minutes before the time for 
starting, she found herself sitting in a railway carriage 
opposite to Captain Lennox. It was always a comfort to her 
to think that she had gone, though it was only to hear that he 
had died in the night. She saw the rooms that he had 
occupied, and associated them ever after most fondly in her 
memory with the idea of her father, and his one cherished 
and faithful friend. 

They had promised Edith before starting that, if all had 
ended as they feared, they would return to dinner; so that 
long, fingering look around the room in which her father had 
died had to be interrupted, and a quiet farewell taken of the 
kind old face that had so often come out with pleasant 
words, and merry quips and cranks. 

Captain Lennox fell asleep on their journey home ; and 
Margaret could cry at leisure, and bethink her of this fatal 
year, and all the woes it had brought to her. No sooner was 
she fully aware of one loss than another came — not to 
supersede her grief for the one before, but to re-open wounds 
and feelings scarcely healed. But at the sound of the 
tender voices of her aunt and Edith, of merry little Sholto’s 
glee at her arrival, and at the sight of the well-lighted rooms, 
with their mistress, pretty in her paleness and her eager 
sorrowful interest, Margaret roused herself from her heavy 
trance of almost superstitious hopelessness, and began to 

491 


North and South 

feel that even around her joy and gladness might gather. 
She had Edith’s place on the sofa; Sholto was taught to 
carry Aunt Margaret’s cup of tea very carefully to her; and, 
by the time she went up to dress, she could thank God for 
having spared her dear old friend a long or a painful illness. 


CHAPTER XLIX 

BREATHING TRANQUILLITY 

“ And down the sunny beach she paces slowly, 

With many doubtful pauses by the way ; 

Grief hath an influence so hushed and holy.” 

Hood. 

“Is not Margaret the heiress?” whispered Edith to her 
husband, as they were in their room alone at night after the 
sad journey to Oxford. She had pulled his tall head down, 
and stood upon tiptoe, and implored him not to be shocked, 
before she had ventured to ask this question. Captain 
Lennox was, however, quite in the dark ; if he had ever heard, 
he had forgotten ; it could not be much that a Eellow of 
a small college had to leave ; but he had never wanted her to 
pay for her board ; and two hundred and fifty pounds a year 
was something ridiculous, considering that she did not take 
wine. Edith came down upon her feet a little bit sadder; 
with a romance blown to pieces. 

A week afterwards she came prancing towards her 
husband, and made him a low curtsey — 

“ I am right and you are wrong, most noble Captain. 
Margaret has had a lawyer’s letter, and she is residuary 
legatee — the legacies being about two thousand pounds, and 
the remainder about forty thousand, at the present value of 
property in Milton.” 

“ Indeed ! and how does she take her good fortune ? ” 

“ Oh, it seems she knew she was to have it all along ; only 
492 


Breathing Tranquillity 

she had no idea it was so much. She looks very white and 
pale, and says she’s afraid of it; but that’s nonsense, you 
know, and will soon go off. I left mamma pouring con- 
gratulations down her throat, and stole away to tell you.” 

It seemed to be supposed, by general consent, that the 
most natural thing was to consider Mr. Lennox henceforward 
as Margaret’s legal adviser. She was so entirely ignorant of 
all forms of business that in nearly everything she had to 
refer to him. He chose out her attorney ; he came to her 
with papers to be signed. He was never so happy as when 
teaching her of what all these mysteries of the law were the 
signs and types. 

“Henry,” said Edith, one day, archly; “do you know 
what I hope and expect all these long conversations with 
Margaret will end in ? ” 

“ No, I don’t,” said he, reddening. “ And I desire you 
not to tell me.” 

“ Oh, very well ; then I need not tell Sholto not to ask 
Mr. Montagu so often to the house.” 

“Just as you choose,” said he with forced coolness. 
“ What you are thinking of, may or may not happen ; but 
this time, before I commit myself, I will see my ground clear. 
Ask whom you choose. It may not be very civil, Edith ; 
but if you meddle in it you will mar it. She has been very 
farouche with me for a long time ; and is only just beginning 
to thaw a little from her Zenobia ways. She has the making 
of a Cleopatra in her, if only she were a little more pagan.” 

“ For my part,” said Edith, a little maliciously, “ I am 
very glad she is a Christian. I know so very few ! ” 

There was no Spain for Margaret that autumn ; although 
to the last she hoped that some fortunate occasion would call 
Frederick to Paris, whither she could easily have met with a 
convoy. Instead of Cadiz, she had to content herself with 
Cromer. To that place her Aunt Shaw and the Lennoxes 
were bound. They had all along wished her to accompany 
them, and, consequently, with their characters, they made 
but lazy efforts to forward her own separate wish. Perhaps 

493 


North and South 

Cromer was, in one sense of the expression, the best for her. 
She needed bodily strengthening and bracing as well as rest. 

Among other hopes that had vanished, was the hope, the 
trust, she had had, that Mr. Bell would have given Mr. 
Thornton the simple facts of the family circumstances which 
had preceded the unfortunate accident that led to Leonards’ 
death. Whatever opinion — however changed it might be from 
what Mr. Thornton had once entertained, she had wished it 
to be based upon a true understanding of what she had done, 
and why she had done it. It would have been a pleasure to 
her; would have given her rest on a point on which she 
should now all her life be restless, unless she could resolve 
not to think upon it. 

It was now so long after the time of these occurrences, 
that there was no possible way of explaining them save the 
one which she had lost by Mr. Bell’s death. She must just 
submit, like many another, to be misunderstood ; but, though 
reasoning herself into the belief that in this hers was no 
uncommon lot, her heart did not ache the less with longing 
that some time — years and years hence — before he died at 
any rate, he might know how much she had been tempted. 
She thought that she did not want to hear that all was ex- 
plained to him, if only she could be sure that he would 
know. But this wish was vain, like so many others ; and 
when she had schooled herself into this conviction, she 
turned with all her heart and strength to the life that lay 
immediately before her, and resolved to strive and make 
the best of that. 

She used to sit long hours upon the beach, gazing 
intently on the waves as they chafed with perpetual motion 
against the pebbly shore — or she looked out upon the more 
distant heave and sparkle against the sky, and heard, with- 
out being conscious of hearing, the eternal psalm, which 
went up continually. She was soothed, without knowing 
how or why. Listlessly she sat there, on the ground, her 
hands clasped round her knees, while her Aunt Shaw did 
Bmall shoppings, and Edith and Captain Lennox rode far 

494 


Breathing Tranquillity 

and wide on shore and inland. The nurses, sauntering on 
with their charges, would pass and repass her, and wonder 
in whispers what she could find to look at so long, day after 
day. And when the family gathered at dinner-time, Margaret 
was so silent and absorbed that Edith voted her moped, and 
hailed a proposal of her husband’s with great satisfaction, 
that Mr. Henry Lennox should be asked to take Cromer 
for a week, on his return from Scotland in October. 

But all this time for thought enabled Margaret to put 
events in their right places, as to origin and significance, 
both as regarded her past life and her future. Those hours 
by the sea-side were not lost, as any one might have seen 
who had had the perception to read, or the care to under- 
stand, the look that Margaret’s face was gradually acquiring. 
Mr. Henry Lennox was excessively struck by the change. 

“ The sea has done Miss Hale an immense deal of good, I 
should fancy,” said he, when she first left the room after his 
arrival in their family circle. “ She looks ten years younger 
than she did in Harley Street.” 

“ That’s the bonnet I got her ! ” said Edith triumphantly. 
“ I knew it would suit her the moment I saw it.” 

“ I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Lennox, in the half-con- 
temptuous, half-indulgent tone he generally used to Edith. 
“ But I believe I know the difference between the charms 
of a dress and the charms of a woman. No mere bonnet 
would have made Miss Hale’s eyes so lustrous and yet so 
soft, or her lips so ripe and red — and her face altogether so full 
of peace and light. — She is like, and yet more beautiful ” — he 
dropped his voice — “ like the Margaret Hale of Helstone.” 

Erom this time the clever and ambitious man bent all 
his powers to gaining Margaret. He loved her sweet beauty. 
He saw the latent sweep of her mind, which could easily 
(he thought) be led to embrace all the objects on which he 
had set his heart. He looked upon her fortune only as a 
part of the complete and superb character of herself and 
her position; yet he was fully aware of the rise which it 
would immediately enable him, the poor barrister, to take. 

495 


North and South 

Eventually he would earn such success, and such honours, 
as would enable him to pay her back, with interest, that 
first advance in wealth which he should owe to her. 

He had been to Milton on business connected with her 
property, on his return from Scotland ; and, with the quick 
eye of a skilled lawyer, ready ever to take in and weigh 
contingencies, he had seen that much additional value was 
yearly accruing to the lands and tenements which she 
owned in that prosperous and increasing town. He was 
glad to find that the present relationship between Margaret 
and himself, of client and legal adviser, was gradually 
superseding the recollection of that unlucky, mismanaged 
day at Helstone. He had thus unusual opportunities of 
intimate intercourse with her, besides those that arose from 
the connection between the families. 

Margaret was only too willing to listen as long as he 
talked of Milton, though he had seen none of the people 
whom she more especially knew. It had been the tone 
with her aunt and cousin to speak of Milton with dislike 
and contempt ; just such feelings as Margaret was ashamed 
to remember she had expressed and felt on first going to 
live there. But Mr. Lennox almost exceeded Margaret in 
his appreciation of the character of Milton and its inhabi- 
tants. Their energy, their power, their indomitable courage 
in struggling and fighting, their lurid vividness of existence, 
captivated and arrested his attention. He was never tired 
of talking about them ; and had never perceived how selfish 
and material were too many of the ends they proposed to 
themselves as the result of all their mighty, untiring en- 
deavour, till Margaret, even in the midst of her gratification, 
had the candour to point this out, as the tainting sin in so 
much that was noble and to be admired. Still, when other 
subjects palled upon her, and she gave but short answers to 
many questions, Henry Lennox found out that an inquiry 
as to some Darkshire peculiarity of character called back the 
light into her eye, the glow into her cheek. 

When they returned to town, Margaret fulfilled one of 
496 


Breathing Tranquillity 

her sea-side resolves, and took her life into her own hands. 
Before they went to Cromer, she had been as docile to her 
aunt’s laws as if she were still the scared little stranger who 
cried herself to sleep that first night in the Harley Street 
nursery. But she had learnt, in those solemn hours of 
thought, that she herself must one day answer for her own 
life, and what she had done with it ; and she tried to settle 
that most difficult problem for woman, how much was to be 
utterly merged in obedience to authority, and how much 
might be set apart for freedom in working. 

Mrs. Shaw was as good-tempered as could be ; and Edith 
had inherited this charming domestic quality. Margaret her- 
self had probably the worst temper of the three, for her quick 
perceptions and over- lively imagination made her hasty, and 
her early isolation from sympathy had made her proud ; but 
she had an indescribable childlike sweetness of heart, which 
made her manners, even in her rarely wilful moods, irre- 
sistible of old ; and now, chastened even by what the world 
called her good fortune, she charmed her reluctant aunt into 
acquiescence with her will. So Margaret gained the acknow- 
ledgment of her right to follow her own ideas of duty. 

“ Only don’t be strong-minded,” pleaded Edith. “ Mamma 
wants you to have a footman of your own ; and I’m sure 
you’re very welcome, for they’re great plagues. Only to 
please me, darling, don’t go and have a strong mind ; it’s the 
only thing I ask. Footman or no footman, don’t be strong- 
minded.” 

“ Don’t be afraid, Edith. I’ll faint on your hands at the 
servants’ dinner-time, the very first opportunity; and then, 
what with Sholto playing with the fire, and the baby crying, 
you’ll begin to wish for a strong-minded woman, equal to 
any emergency.” 

“ And you’ll not grow too good to joke and be merry ? ” 

“ Not I. I shall be merrier than I have ever been, now 
I have got my own way.” 

“ And you’ll not go a figure, but let me buy your dresses 
for you ? ” 


497 


2 K 


North and South 

“ Indeed I mean to buy them for myself. You shall come 
with me if you like ; but no one can please me but myself.” 

“ Oh ! I was afraid you’d dress in brown and dust-colour, 
not to show the dirt you’ll pick up in all those places. I’m 
glad you’re going to keep one or two vanities, just by way of 
specimens of the old Adam.” 

“ I’m going to be just the same, Edith, if you and my 
aunt could but fancy so. Only as I have neither husband 
nor child to give me natural duties, I must make myself 
some, in addition to ordering my gowns.” 

In the family conclave, which was made up of Edith, her 
mother and her husband, it was decided that perhaps all 
these plans of hers would only secure her the more for 
Henry Lennox. They kept her out of the way of other 
friends who might have eligible sons or brothers ; and it 
was also agreed that she never seemed to take much 
pleasure in the society of any one but Henry, out of their 
own family. The other admirers, attracted by her appearance 
or the reputation of her fortune, were swept away, by her 
unconscious smiling disdain, into the paths frequented by 
other beauties less fastidious, or other heiresses with a larger 
amount of gold. Henry and she grew slowly into closer 
intimacy ; but neither he nor she were people to brook the 
slightest notice of their proceedings. 


CHAPTEE L 

CHANGES AT MILTON 

“ Here we go, up, up, up ; 

And here we go down, down, downee ! ” 

Nursery Song. 

Meanwhile at Milton the chimneys smoked, the cease- 
less roar and mighty beat and dazzling whirl of machinery 
struggled and strove perpetually. Senseless and purposeless 

498 


Changes at Milton 

were wood and iron and steam in their endless labours ; but 
the persistence of their monotonous work was rivalled in 
tireless endurance by the strong crowds, who, with sense 
and with purpose, were busy and restless in seeking after — 
What? 

In the streets there were few loiterers — none walking for 
mere pleasure ; every man’s face was set in lines of eager- 
ness or anxiety ; news was sought for with fierce avidity ; 
and men jostled each other aside in the Mart and in the 
Exchange, as they did in life, in the deep selfishness of 
competition. There was gloom over the town. Few came 
to buy, and those who did were looked at suspiciously by 
the sellers; for credit was insecure, and the most stable 
might have their fortunes affected by the sweep in the great 
neighbouring port among the shipping houses. Hitherto 
there had been no failures in Milton ; but, from the immense 
speculations that had come to light in making a bad end in 
America, and yet nearer home, it was known that some 
Milton houses of business must suffer so severely that every 
day men’s faces asked, if their tongues did not, “ What news ? 
Who is gone ? How will it affect me ? ” 

And, if two or three spoke together, they dwelt rather 
on the names of those who were safe than dared to hint 
at those likely, in their opinion, to go ; for idle breath may, 
at such times, cause the downfall of some who might other- 
wise weather the storm ; and one going down drags many 
after. “ Thornton is safe,” say they. “ His business is 
large — extending every year ; but such a head as he has, 
and so prudent with all his daring ! ” 

Then one man draws another aside, and walks a little 
apart, and with head inclined into his neighbour’s ear he 
says, “ Thornton’s business is large ; but he has spent his 
profits in extending it; he has no capital laid by; his 
machinery is new within these two years, and has cost him 

we won’t say what ! — a word to the wise ! ” But that 

Mr. Harrison was a croaker — a man who had succeeded to 
his father’s trade-made fortune, which he had feared to lose 

499 


North and South 

by altering his mode of business to any having a larger 
scope ; yet he grudged every penny made by others more 
daring and far-sighted. 

But the truth was, Mr. Thornton was hard pressed. He 
felt it acutely in his vulnerable point — his pride in the 
commercial character which he had established for himself. 
Architect of his own fortunes, he attributed this to no special 
merit or qualities of his own, but to the power, which he 
believed that commerce gave to every brave, honest, and 
persevering man, to raise himself to a level from which he 
might see and read the great game of worldly success, and 
honestly, by such far-sightedness, command more power 
and influence than in any other mode of life. Far away, 
in the East and in the West, where his person would never 
be known, his name was to be regarded, and his wishes to 
be fulfilled, and his word pass like gold. That was the idea 
of merchant-life with which Mr. Thornton had started. “ Her 
merchants be like princes,” said his mother, reading the 
text aloud, as if it were a trumpet-call to invite her boy to 
the struggle. 

He was but like many others — men, women, and children 
— alive to distant, and dead to near things. He sought to 
possess the influence of a name in foreign countries and far- 
away seas — to become the head of a firm that should be 
known for generations; and it had taken him long silent 
years to come even to a glimmering of what he might be 
now, to-day, here in his own town, his own factory, among 
his own people. He and they had led parallel lives — very 
close, but never touching — till the accident (or so it seemed) 
of his acquaintance with Higgins. Once brought face to 
face, man to man, with an individual of the masses around 
him, and (take notice) out of the character of master and 
workman, in the first instance, they had each begun to 
recognise that “ we have all of us one human heart.” It was 
the fine point of the wedge ; and until now, when the appre- 
hension of losing his connection with two or three of the 
workmen whom he had so lately begun to know as men — * 

500 


Changes at Milton 

of having a plan or two, which were experiments lying very 
close to his heart, roughly nipped off without trial — gave 
a new poignancy to the subtle fear that came over him from 
time to time ; until now, he had never recognised how much 
and how deep was the interest he had grown of late to feel 
in his position as manufacturer, simply because it led him 
into such close contact, and gave him the opportunity of 
so much power, among a race of people strange, shrewd, 
ignorant, but, above all, full of character and strong human 
feeling. 

He reviewed his position as a Milton manufacturer. The 
strike a year and a half ago — or more, for it was now un- 
timely wintry weather, in a late spring — that strike, when he 
was young, and he now was old— had prevented his com- 
pleting some of the large orders he had then on hand. He 
had locked up a good deal of his capital in new and expen- 
sive machinery, and he had also bought cotton largely, for 
the fulfilment of these orders, taken under contract. That 
he had not been able to complete them, was owing in some 
degree to the utter want of skill on the part of the Irish 
hands whom he had imported; much of their work was 
damaged and unfit to be sent forth by a house which prided 
itself on turning out nothing but first-rate articles. For 
many months, the embarrassment caused by the strike had 
been an obstacle in Mr. Thornton’s way ; and often, when 
his eye fell on Higgins, he could have spoken angrily to him 
without any present cause, just from feeling how serious 
was the injury that had arisen from this affair in which he 
was implicated. But when he became conscious of this 
sudden, quick resentment, he resolved to curb it. It would 
not satisfy him to avoid Higgins ; he must convince himself 
that he was master over his own anger, by being particularly 
careful to allow Higgins access to him, whenever the strict 
rules of business, or Mr. Thornton’s leisure permitted. And, 
by-and-by, he lost all sense of resentment in wonder how 
it was, or could be, that two men like himself and Higgins, 
living by the same trade, working in their different ways at 


North and South 

the same object, could look upon each other’s position and 
duties in so strangely different a way. And thence arose 
that intercourse, which, though it might not have the effect 
of preventing all future clash of opinion and action, when 
the occasion arose, would, at any rate, enable both master 
and man to look upon each other with far more charity and 
sympathy, and bear with each other more patiently and 
kindly. Besides this improvement of feeling, both Mr. 
Thornton and his workmen found out their ignorance as to 
positive matters of fact, known heretofore to one side, but 
not to the other. 

But now had come one of those periods of bad trade, 
when the market falling brought down the value of all large 
stocks ; Mr. Thornton’s fell to nearly half. No orders were 
coming in ; so he lost the interest of the capital he had 
locked up in machinery ; indeed, it was difficult to get pay- 
ment for the orders completed ; yet there was the constant 
drain of expenses for working the business. Then the bills 
became - due for the cotton he had purchased ; and money 
being scarce, he could only borrow at exorbitant interest, 
and yet he could not realise any of his property. But he did 
not despair ; he exerted himself day and night to foresee and 
to provide for all emergencies ; he was as calm and gentle to 
the women in his home as ever ; to the workmen in his mill 
he spoke not many words, but they knew him by this time ; 
and many a curt, decided answer was received by them 
rather with sympathy for the care they saw pressing upon 
him, than with the suppressed antagonism which had for- 
merly been smouldering, and ready for hard words and hard 
judgments on all occasions. “ Th’ measter’s a deal to potter 
him,” said Higgins one day, as he heard Mr. Thornton’s 
short, sharp inquiry, why such a command had not been 
obeyed, and caught the sound of the suppressed sigh which 
he heaved in going past the room where some of the men 
were working. Higgins and another man stopped over-hours 
that night unknown to any one, to get the neglected piece 
of work done; and Mr. Thornton never knew but that the 

502 


Changes at Milton 

overlooker, to whom he had given the command in the 
first instance, had done it himself. 

“ Eh ! I reckon I know who’d ha’ been sorry for to see 
our measter sitting so like a piece o’ grey calico ! Th’ oud 
parson would ha’ fretted his woman’s heart out, if he’d seen 
the woeful looks I have seen on our measter’s face,” thought 
Higgins, one day, as he was approaching Mr. Thornton in 
Marlborough Street. 

“ Measter,” said he, stopping his employer in his quick 
resolved walk, and causing that gentleman to look up with 
a sudden annoyed start, as if his thoughts had been far 
away. 

“ Have yo’ heerd aught of Miss Marget lately ? ” 

“ Miss — who ? ” replied Mr. Thornton. 

“ Miss Marget — Miss Hale — th’ oud parson’s daughter — 
yo’ known who I mean well enough, if yo’ll only think a 
bit — ” (there was nothing disrespectful in the tone in which 
this was said). 

“ Oh yes ! ” and suddenly the wintry frost-bound look of 
care had left Mr. Thornton’s face, as if some soft summer 
gale had blown all anxiety away from his mind ; and, though 
his mouth was as much compressed as before, his eyes 
smiled out benignly on his questioner. 

“ She’s my landlord now, you know, Higgins. I hear of 
her through her agent here, every now and then. She’s well 
and among friends — thank you, Higgins.” That “ thank 
you,” that lingered after the other words, and yet came 
with so much warmth of feeling, let in a new light to the 
acute Higgins. It might be but a will-o’-the-wisp, but he 
thought he would follow it and ascertain whither it would 
lead him. 

“ And she’s not getten married, measter ? ” 

“Not yet.” The face was cloudy once more. “ There is 
some talk of it, as I understand, with a connection of the 
family.” 

“ Then she’ll not be for coming to Milton again, I 
reckon.” 


503 


North and South 


“ No ! ” 

“ Stop a minute, measter.” Then going up confidenti- 
ally close, he said, “ Is th’ young gentleman cleared ? ” 
He enforced the depth of his intelhgence by a wink of the 
eye, which only made things more mysterious to Mr. 
Thornton. 

“ Th’ young gentleman, I mean — Master Frederick, they 
ca’ed him — her brother as was over here, yo’ known.” 

“ Over here ! ” 

“ Ay, to be sure, at the missus’s death. Yo’ need na be 
feared of my telling ; for Mary and me, we knowed it all 
along, only we held our peace, for we got it through Mary 
working in th’ house.” 

“ And he was over ? It was her brother ? ” 

“ Sure enough, and I reckoned yo’ knowed it, or I’d 
never ha’ let on. Yo’ knowed she had a brother ? ” 

“ Yes, I know all about him. And he was over at Mrs. 
Hale’s death ? ” 

“ Nay ! I’m not going for to tell more. I’ve maybe 
getten them into mischief already, for they kept it very 
close. I nobbut wanted to know if they’d getten him 
clear?” 

“Not that I know of. I know nothing. I only hear of 
Miss Hale, now, as my landlord, and through her lawyer.” 

He broke off from Higgins, to follow the business on 
which he had been bent when the latter first accosted him ; 
leaving Higgins baffled in his endeavour. 

“ It was her brother,” said Mr. Thornton to himself. “ I 
am glad. I may never see her again ; but it is a comfort — a 
relief — to know that much. I knew she could not be un- 
maidenly ; and yet I yearned for conviction. Now I am 
glad ! ” 

It was a little golden thread running through the dark 
web of his present fortunes, which were growing ever 
gloomier and more gloomy. His agent had largely trusted a 
house in the American trade, which went down, along with 
several others, just at this time, like a pack of cards, the fall 

504 


Changes at Milton 

of one compelling other failures. What were Mr. Thornton'’ s 
engagements ? Could he stand ? 

Night after night he took books and papers into his own 
private room, and sate up there long after the family were 
gone to bed. He thought that no one knew of this occupa- 
tion of the hours he should have spent in sleep. One morn- 
ing, when daylight was stealing in through the crevices of 
his shutters, and he had never been in bed, and, in hopeless 
indifference of mind, was thinking that he could do without 
the hour or two of rest, which was all that he should be 
able to take before the stir of daily labour began again, the 
door of his room opened, and his mother stood there, 
dressed as she had been the day before. She had never laid 
herself down to slumber any more than he. Their eyes 
met. Their faces were cold and rigid and wan, from long 
watching. 

“ Mother ! why are you not in bed ? ” 

“ Son John,” said she, “ do you think I can sleep with an 
easy mind while you keep awake full of care ? You have 
not told me what your trouble is ; but sore trouble you have 
had these many days past.” 

“ Trade is bad.” 

“ And you dread ” 

“ I dread nothing,” replied he, drawing up his head, and 
holding it erect. “ I know now that no man will suffer by 
me. That was my anxiety.” 

“ But how do you stand ? Shall you — will it be a 
failure ? ” her steady voice trembling in an unwonted 
manner. 

“ Not a failure. I must give up business, but I pay all 
men. I might redeem myself — I am sorely tempted ” 

“How? Oh, John! keep up your name — try all risks 
for that. How redeem it ? ” 

“By a speculation offered to me, full of risk, but, if 
successful, placing me high above water-mark, so that no 
one need ever know the strait I am in. Still, if it 

fails ” 


North and South 

“ And if it fails ” said she, advancing, and laying her 

hand on his arm, her eyes full of eager light. She held her 
breath to hear the end of his speech. 

“ Honest men are ruined by a rogue,” said he gloomily. 
“Asl stand now, my creditors’ money is safe — every farthing 
of it ; but I don’t know where to find my own — it may be 
all gone, and I penniless at this moment. Therefore, it is 
my creditors’ money that I should risk.” 

“ But if it succeeded, they need never know. Is it so 
desperate a speculation ? I am sure it is not, or you would 
never have thought of it. If it succeeded ” 

“ I should be a rich man, and my peace of conscience 
would be gone ! ” 

“ Why ? You would have injured no one.” 

“ No ; but I should have run the risk of ruining many 
for my own paltry aggrandisement. Mother, I have decided ! 
You won’t much grieve over our leaving this house, shall 
you, dear mother ? ” 

“ No ! but to have you other than what you are will 
break my heart. What can you do ? ” 

“ Be always the same John Thornton in whatever cir- 
cumstances ; endeavouring to do right and making great 
blunders ; and then trying to be brave in setting to afresh. 
But it is hard, mother. I have so worked and planned. 
I have discovered new powers in my situation too late — 
and now all is over, I am too old to begin again with the 
same heart. It is hard, mother.” 

He turned away from her, and covered his face with his 
hands. 

“ I can’t think,” said she, with gloomy defiance in her 
tone, “ how it comes about. Here is my boy — good son, 
just man, tender heart — and he fails in all he sets his mind 
upon : he finds a woman to love, and she cares no more for 
his affection than if he had been any common man ; he 
labours, and his labour comes to nought. Other people 
prosper and grow rich, and hold their paltry names high 
and dry above shame.” 


506 


Changes at Milton 

“ Shame never touched me,” said he, in a low tone : but 
she went on. 

“ I sometimes have wondered where justice was gone to, 
and now I don’t believe there is such a thing in the world — 
now you are come to this; you, my own John Thornton, 
though you and I may be beggars together — my own dear 
son ! ” 

She fell upon his neck and kissed him through her tears. 

“ Mother ! ” said he, holding her gently in his arms, 
“who has sent me my lot in life, both of good and of 
evil ? ” 

She shook her head. She would have nothing to do 
with religion just then. 

“ Mother,” he went on, seeing that she would not speak, 
“I, too, have been rebellious ; but I am striving to be so no 
longer. Help me, as you helped me when I was a child. 
Then you said many good words — when my father died, and 
we were sometimes sorely short of comforts — which we shall 
never be now; you said brave, noble, trustful words then, 
mother, which I have never forgotten, though they may 
have lain dormant. Speak to me again in the old way, 
mother. Do not let us have to think that the world has 
too much hardened our hearts. If you would say the old 
good words, it would make me feel something of the pious 
simplicity of my childhood. I say them to myself, but they 
would come differently from you, remembering all the cares 
and trials you have had to bear.” 

“ I have had a many,” said she, sobbing, “ but none so 
sore as this. To see you cast down from your rightful place ! 
I could say it for myself, John, but not for you. Not for 
you ! God has seen fit to be very hard on you, very.” 

She shook with the sobs that come so convulsively when 
an old person weeps. The silence around her struck her 
at last, and she quieted herself to listen. No sound. She 
looked. Her son sate by the table, his arms thrown half 
across it, his head bent face downwards. 

“ Oh, John ! ” she said, and she lifted his face up. Such 

5°7 


North and South 

a strange, pallid look of gloom was on it, that for a moment 
it struck her that this look was the forerunner of death ; 
but, as the rigidity melted out of the countenance and the 
natural colour returned, and she saw that he was himself 
once again, all worldly mortification sank to nothing before 
the consciousness of the great blessing that he himself by 
his simple existence was to her. She thanked God for this, 
and this alone, with a fervour that swept away all rebellious 
feelings from her mind. 

He did not speak readily ; but he went and opened the 
shutters, and let the ruddy light of dawn flood the room. 
But the wind was in the east; the weather was piercing 
cold, as it had been for weeks ; there would be no demand 
for light summer goods this year. That hope for the revival 
of trade must utterly be given up. 

It was a great comfort to have had this conversation with 
his mother, and to feel sure that, however they might hence- 
forward keep silence on all these anxieties, they yet under- 
stood each other’s feelings, and were, if not in harmony, at 
least not in discord with each other, in their way of viewing 
them. Fanny’s husband was vexed at Thornton’s refusal to 
take any share in the speculation which he had offered to him, 
and withdrew from any possibility of being supposed able to 
assist him with ready money, which indeed the speculator 
needed for his own venture. 

There was nothing for it at last, but that which Mr. 
Thornton had dreaded for many weeks ; he had to give up 
the business in which he had been so long engaged with so 
much honour and success ; and look out for a subordinate 
situation. Marlborough Mills and the adjacent dwelling were 
held under a long lease; they must, if possible, be relet. 
There was an immediate choice of situations offered to Mr. 
Thornton. Mr. Hamper would have been only too glad to 
have secured him as a steady and experienced partner for 
his son, whom he was setting up with a large capital in a 
neighbouring town ; but the young man was half -educated 
as regarded information, and wholly uneducated as regarded 

5°8 


Meeting again 

any other responsibility than that of getting money, and 
brutalised both as to his pleasures and his pains. Mr. 
Thornton declined having any share in a partnership which 
would frustrate what few plans he had that survived the 
wreck of his fortunes. He would sooner consent to be only 
a manager, where he could have a certain degree of power 
beyond the mere money-getting part, than have to fall in 
with the tyrannical humours of a moneyed partner with 
whom he felt sure that he should quarrel in a few months. 

So he waited, and stood on one side with profound 
humility, as the news swept through the Exchange of the 
enormous fortune which his brother-in-law had made by his 
daring speculation. It was a nine days’ wonder. Success 
brought with it its worldly consequence of extreme admiration. 
No one was considered so wise and far-seeing as Mr. Watson. 


CHAPTER LI 

MEETING AGAIN 

“ Bear up, brave heart 1 we will be calm and strong ; 

Sure, we can master eyes, or cheek, or tongue, 

Nor let the smallest tell-tale sign appear 
She ever was, and is, and will be dear.” 

Rhyming Play. 

It was a hot summer’s evening. Edith came into Mar- 
garet’s bedroom, the first time in her habit, the second ready 
dressed for dinner. No one was there at first ; the second 
time, Edith found Dixon laying out Margaret’s dress on the 
bed ; but no Margaret. Edith remained to fidget about. 

“ Oh, Dixon ! not those horrid blue flowers to that dead 
gold-coloured gown ! What taste ! Wait a minute, and I 
will bring you some pomegranate blossoms.” 

“ It’s not a dead gold-colour, ma’am. It’s a straw-colour ; 
and blue always goes with straw-colour.” But Edith had 

509 


North and South 

brought the brilliant scarlet flowers before Dixon had got 
half through her remonstrance. 

“ Where is Miss Hale ? ” asked Edith, as soon as she had 
tried the effect of the' garniture. “ I can’t think,” she went 
on pettishly, “ how my aunt allowed her to get into such 
rambling habits in Milton ! I’m sure I’m always expecting 
to hear of her having met with something horrible among 
all those wretched places she pokes herself into. I should 
never dare to go down some of those streets without a servant. 
They’re not fit for ladies.” 

Dixon was still huffed about her despised taste ; so she 
replied rather shortly — 

“ It’s no wonder to my mind, when I hear ladies talk 
such a deal about being ladies — and when they’re such 
fearful, delicate, dainty ladies, too — I say it’s no wonder to 
me that there are no longer any saints on earth ” 

“ Oh, Margaret ! here you are ! I have been so wanting 
you. But how your cheeks are flushed with the heat, poor 
child ! But only think what that tiresome Henry has done ; 
really, he exceeds brother-in-law’s limits. Just when my 
party was made up so beautifully — fitted in so precisely for 
Mr. Colthurst — there has Henry come, with an apology it is 
true, and making use of your name for an excuse, and asked 
me if he may bring that Mr. Thornton of Milton — your 
tenant, you know — who is in London about some law 
business. It will spoil my number, quite.” 

“ I don’t mind dinner. I don’t want any,” said Margaret, 
in a low voice. “ Dixon can get me a cup of tea here, and I 
will be in the drawing-room by the time you come up. I 
shall really be glad to lie down.” 

“No, no ! that will never do. You do look wretchedly 
white, to be sure ; but that is just the heat, and we can’t do 
without you possibly. (Those flowers a little lower, Dixon. 
They look glorious flames, Margaret, in your black hair.) 
You know we planned for you to talk about Milton to Mr. 
Colthurst. “ Oh, to be sure ! and this man comes from Milton. 
I believe it will be capital, after all. Mr. Colthurst can pump 

5io 


Meeting again 

him well on all the subjects in which he is interested, and 
it will be great fun to trace out your experiences, and this 
Mr. Thornton’s wisdom, in Mr. Colthurst’s next speech in the 
House. Eeally, I think it is a happy hit of Henry’s. I asked 
him if he was a man one would be ashamed of ; and he 
replied, ‘Not if you’ve any sense in you, my little sister.’ 
So I suppose he is able to sound his K s, which is not a 
common Darkshire accomplishment — eh, Margaret ? ” 

“ Mr. Lennox did not say why Mr. Thornton was come 
up to town? Was it law business connected with the 
property ? ” asked Margaret, in a constrained voice. 

“ Oh, he’s failed, or something of the kind, that Henry 
told you of that day you had such a headache — what was it ? 
(There, that’s capital, Dixon. Miss Hale does us credit, 
does she not ?) I wish I was as tall as a queen, and as 
brown as a gipsy, Margaret.” 

“ But about Mr. Thornton ? ” 

“ Oh ! I really have such a terrible head for law business. 
Henry will like nothing better than to tell you all about it. 
I know the impression he made upon me was, that Mr. 
Thornton was very badly off, and a very respectable man, 
and that I’m to be very civil to him ; and, as I did not know 
how, I came to you to ask you to help me. And now come 
down with me, and rest on the sofa for a quarter of an hour.” 

The privileged brother-in-law came early ; and Margaret, 
reddening as she spoke, began to ask him the questions she 
wanted to hear answered about Mr. Thornton. 

“ He came up about this sub-letting the property — Marl- 
borough Mills, and the house and premises adjoining, I mean. 
He is unable to keep it on ; and there are deeds and leases to 
be looked over, and agreements to be drawn up. I hope 
Edith will receive him properly ; but she was rather put out, 
as I could see, by the liberty I had taken in begging for an 
invitation for him. But I thought you would like to have 
some attention shown him ; and one would be particularly 
scrupulous in paying every respect to a man who is going 
down in the world.” He had dropped his voice to speak to 

5 11 


North and South 

Margaret, by whom he was sitting ; but as he ended he sprang 
up, and introduced Mr. Thornton, who had that moment 
entered, to Edith and Captain Lennox. 

Margaret looked with an anxious eye at Mr. Thornton 
while he was thus occupied. It was considerably more than 
a year since she had seen him, and events had occurred to 
change him much in that time. His fine figure yet bore him 
above the common height of men, and gave him a distin- 
guished appearance, from the ease of motion which arose 
out of it, and was natural to him ; but his face looked older 
and careworn; yet a noble composure sate upon it, which 
impressed those who had just been hearing of his changed 
position with a sense of inherent dignity and manly strength. 
He was aware, from the first glance he had given round the 
room, that Margaret was there ; he had seen her intent look 
of occupation as she listened to Mr. Henry Lennox ; and he 
came up to her with the perfectly regulated manner of an 
old friend. With his first calm words a vivid colour flashed 
into her cheeks, which never left them again during the 
evening. She did not seem to have much to say to him. 
She disappointed him by the quiet way in which she asked 
what seemed to him to be the merely necessary questions 
respecting her old acquaintances in Milton ; but others came 
in — more intimate in the house than he — and he fell into the 
background, where he and Mr. Lennox talked together from 
time to time. 

“ You think Miss Hale looking well,” said Mr. Lennox, 
“ don’t you ? Milton didn’t agree with her, I imagine ; for, 
when she first came to London, I thought I had never seen 
any one so much changed. To-night she is looking radiant. 
But she is much stronger. Last autumn she was fatigued 
with a walk of a couple of miles. On Friday evening we 
walked up to Hampstead and back. Yet on Saturday she 
looked as well as sbe does now.” 

“ We ! ” Who ? They two alone ? 

Mr. Colthurst was a very clever man, and a rising 
member of Parliament. He had a quick eye at discerning 

512 


Meeting again 

character, and was struck by a remark which Mr. Thornton 
made at dinner-time. He inquired from Edith who that 
gentleman was ; and, rather to her surprise, she found, from 
the tone of his “ Indeed ! ” that Mr. Thornton of Milton was 
not such an unknown name to him as she imagined it would 
be. Her dinner was going off well. Henry was in good 
humour, and brought out his dry caustic wit admirably. Mr. 
Thornton and Mr. Colthurst found one or two mutual 
subjects of interest, which they could only touch upon then, 
reserving them for more private after-dinner talk. Margaret 
looked beautiful in the pomegranate flowers : and, if she did 
lean back in her chair and speak but little, Edith was not 
annoyed, for the conversation flowed on smoothly without 
her. Margaret was watching Mr. Thornton’s face. He 
never looked at her ; so she might study him unobserved, 
and note the changes which even this short time had 
wrought in him. Only once, at some unexpected mot of Mr. 
Lennox’s, his face flashed out into the old look of intense 
enjoyment; the merry brightness returned to his eyes, the 
lips just parted to suggest the brilliant smile of former days ; 
and, for an instant, his glance instinctively sought hers, as if 
he wanted her sympathy. But when their eyes met, his 
whole countenance changed ; he was grave and anxious once 
more ; and he resolutely avoided even looking near her again 
during dinner. 

There were only two ladies, besides their own party, and 
as these were occupied in conversation by her aunt and 
Edith, when they went up into the drawing-room, Margaret 
languidly employed herself about some work. Presently the 
gentlemen came up, Mr. Colthurst and Mr. Thornton in close 
conversation. Mr. Lennox drew near to Margaret, and said 
in a low voice — 

“I really think Edith owes me thanks for my contri- 
bution to her party. You’ve no idea what an agreeable, 
sensible fellow this tenant of yours is. He has been the very 
man to give Colthurst all the facts he wanted coaching in. 
I can’t conceive how he contrived to mismanage his affairs.” 

5i3 2 L 


North and South 

“With his powers and opportunities you would have 
succeeded,” said Margaret. He did not quite relish the tone 
in which she spoke, although the words but expressed a 
thought which had passed through his own mind. As he 
was silent, they caught a swell in the sound of conversation 
going on near the fireplace between Mr. Colthurst and Mr. 
Thornton. 

“ I assure you, I heard it spoken of with great interest — 
curiosity as to its result, perhaps I should rather say. I 
heard your name frequently mentioned during my short 
stay in the neighbourhood.” Then they lost some words ; 
and, when next they could hear, Mr. Thornton was speaking, 

“ I have not the elements for popularity — if they spoke of 
me in that way, they were mistaken. I fall slowly into new 
projects ; and I find it difficult to let myself be known, even 
by those whom I desire to know, and with whom I would 
fain have no reserve. Yet, even with all these drawbacks, I 
felt that I was on the right path, and that, starting from a 
kind of friendship with one, I was becoming acquainted with 
many. The advantages were mutual : we were both uncon- 
sciously and consciously teaching each other.” 

“You say ‘were.’ I trust you are intending to pursue 
the same course ? ” 

“ I must stop Colthurst,” said Henry Lennox hastily. 
And by an abrupt, yet a propos, question, he turned the 
current of the conversation, so as not to give Mr. Thornton 
the mortification of acknowledging his want of success and 
consequent change of position. But, as soon as the newly- 
started subject had come to a close, Mr. Thornton resumed 
the conversation just where it had been interrupted, and 
gave Mr. Colthurst the reply to his inquiry. 

“ I have been unsuccessful in business, and have had to 
give up my position as a master. I am on the look-out for 
a situation in Milton, where I may meet with employment 
under some one who will be willing to let me go along my 
own way in such matters as these. I can depend upon 
myself for having no go-ahead theories that I would rashly 

5i4 


Meeting again 

bring into practice. My only wish is to have the opportunity 
of cultivating some intercourse with the hands beyond the 
mere ‘ cash nexus.’ But it might be the point Archimedes 
sought from which to move the earth, to judge from the 
importance attached to it by some of our manufacturers, 
who shake their heads and look grave as soon as I name 
the one or two experiments that I should like to try.” 

“ You call them ‘ experiments,’ I notice,” said Mr. 
Colthurst, with a delicate increase of respect in his 
manner. 

“ Because I believe them to be such. I am not sure 
of the consequences that may result from them. But I am 
sure they ought to be tried. I have arrived at the convic- 
tion that no mere institutions, however wise, and however 
much thought may have been required to organise and 
arrange them, can attach class to class as they should be 
attached, unless the working out of such institutions bring 
the individuals of the different classes into actual personal 
contact. Such intercourse is the very breath of life. A 
working-man can hardly be made to feel and know how 
much his employer may have laboured in his study at 
plans for the benefit of his workpeople. A complete plan 
emerges like a piece of machinery, apparently fitted for every 
emergency. But the hands accept it as they do machinery, 
without understanding the intense mental labour and fore- 
thought required to bring it to such perfection. But I would 
take an idea, the working out of which would necessitate 
personal intercourse ; it might not go well at first, but at 
every hitch interest would be felt by an increasing number 
of men, and at last its success in working come to be desired 
by all, as all had borne a part in the formation of the plan ; 
and even then I am sure that it would lose its vitality, cease 
to be living, as soon as it was no longer carried on by 
that sort of common interest which invariably makes people 
find means and ways of seeing each other, and becoming 
acquainted with each others’ characters and persons, and 
even tricks of temper and modes of speech. We should 

5i5 


North and South 

understand each other better, and I’ll venture to say we 
should like each other more.” 

“ And you think they may prevent the recurrence of 
strikes ? ” 

“ Not at all. My utmost expectation only goes so far as 
this — that they may render strikes not the bitter, venomous 
sources of hatred they have hitherto been. A more hopeful 
man might imagine that a closer and more genial intercourse 
between classes might do away with strikes. But I am not 
a hopeful man.” 

Suddenly, as if a new idea had struck him, he crossed 
over to where Margaret was sitting, and began, without 
preface, as if he knew she had been listening to all that had 



“ Miss Hale, I had a round-robin from some of my men 
— I suspect in Higgins’s handwriting — stating their wish to 
work for me, if ever I was in a position to employ men again 
on my own behalf. That was good, wasn’t it ? ” 

“ Yes ! Just right. I am glad of it,” said Margaret, 
looking up straight into his face with her speaking eyes, and 
then dropping them under his eloquent glance. He gazed 
back at her for a minute, as if he did not know exactly what 
he was about. Then sighed ; and saying, “ I knew you 
would like it,” he turned away, and never spoke to her again 
until he bid her a formal “ good night.” 

As Mr. Lennox took his departure, Margaret said, with a 
blush that she could not repress, and with some hesitation — 
“ Can I speak to you to-morrow ? I want your help 
about — something. ” 

“ Certainly. I will come at whatever time you name. 
You cannot give me a greater pleasure than by making me 
of any use. At eleven ? Very well.” 

His eye brightened with exultation. How she was learn- 
ing to depend upon him! It seemed as if any day now 
might give him the certainty, without having which he had 
determined never to offer to her again. 


“ Pack Clouds 


away 

CHAPTER LII 
“PACK clouds away*' 

“ For joy or grief, for hope or fear 
For all hereafter, as for here, 

In peace or strife, in storm or shine.” 

Anon. 

Edith went about on tiptoe, and checked Sholto in all loud 
speaking that next morning, as if any sudden noise would 
interrupt the conference that was taking place in the draw- 
ing-room. Two o’clock came ; and they still sate there 
with closed doors. Then there was a man’s footsteps 
running downstairs ; and Edith peeped out of the drawing- 
room. 

“ Well, Henry? ” said she, with a look of interrogation. 

“ Well ! ” said he, rather shortly. 

“ Come in to lunch ! ” 

“ No, thank you, I can’t. I’ve lost too much time here 
already.” 

“ Then it’s not all settled ! ” said Edith despondingly. 

“ No ! not at all. It never will be settled, if the ‘ it ’ is 
what I conjecture you mean. That will never be, Edith, so 
give up thinking about it.” 

“ But it would be so nice for us all,” pleaded Edith. 
“ I should always feel comfortable about the children, if 
I had Margaret settled down near me. As it is, I am 
always afraid of her going off to Cadiz.” 

“I will try, when I marry, to look out for a young 
lady who has a knowledge of the management of children. 
That is all I can do. Miss Hale would not have me. And 
I shall not ask her.” 

“ Then what have you been talking about ? ” 

“ A thousand things you would not understand : invest- 
ments, and leases, and value of land.” 

“Oh, go away, if that’s all. You and she will be 
517 2 l 3 


North and South 

unbearably stupid, if you’ve been talking all this time about 
such weary things.” 

“ Very well. I’m coming again to-morrow, and bringing 
Mr. Thornton with me, to have some more talk with Miss 
Hale.” 

“ Mr. Thornton ! What has he to do with it ? ” 

“He is Miss Hale’s tenant,” said Mr. Lennox, turning 
away. “ And he wishes to give up his lease.” 

“ Oh, very well. I can’t understand details, so don’t 
give them me.” 

“ The only detail I want you to understand is, to let us 
have the back drawing-room undisturbed, as it was to-day. 
In general, the children and servants are so in and out, 
that I can never get any business satisfactorily explained; 
and the arrangements we have to make to-morrow are of 
importance.” 

No one ever knew why Mr. Lennox did not keep to his 
appointment on the following day. Mr. Thornton came 
true to his time; and, after keeping him waiting for nearly 
an hour, Margaret came in looking very white and anxious. 

She began hurriedly — 

“ I am so sorry Mr. Lennox is not here — he could have 
done it so much better than I can. He is my adviser in 
this ” 

“ I am sorry that I came, if it troubles you. Shall I go 
to Mr. Lennox’s chambers and try and find him ? ” 

“No, thank you. I wanted to tell you how grieved I 
was to find that I am to lose you as a tenant. But, Mr. 
Lennox says, things are sure to brighten ” 

“ Mr. Lennox knows little about it,” said Mr. Thornton 
quietly. “ Happy and fortunate in all a man cares for, he 
does not understand what it is to find oneself no longer 
young — yet thrown back to the starting-point which requires 
the hopeful energy of youth — to feel one half of life gone, 
and nothing done — nothing remaining of wasted opportunity 
but the bitter recollection that it has been. Miss Hale, 
I would rather not hear Mr. Lennox’s opinion of my affairs. 

5i8 


“ Pack Clouds away ” 

Those who are happy and successful themselves are too apt 
to make light of the misfortunes of others.” 

“ You are unjust,” said Margaret gently. “ Mr. Lennox 
has only spoken of the great probability which he believes 
there to be of your redeeming — your more than redeeming — 
what you have lost. Don’t speak till I have ended — pray 
don’t ! ” And collecting herself once more, she went on 
rapidly turning over some law papers, and statements of 
accounts in a trembling, hurried manner. “ Oh, here [it is ! 
and — he drew me out a proposal — I wish he was here to 
explain it — showing that if you would take some money of 
mine, eighteen hundred and fifty-seven pounds, lying just 
at this moment unused in the bank, and bringing me in 
only two and a half per cent. — you could pay me much 
better interest, and might go on working Marlborough Mills.” 
Her voice had cleared itself and become more steady. Mr. 
Thornton did not speak, and she went on looking for some 
paper on which were written down the proposals for security ; 
for she was most anxious to have it all looked upon in the 
light of a mere business arrangement, in which the principal 
advantage would be on her side. While she sought for this 
paper, her very heart-pulse was arrested by the tone in 
which Mr. Thornton spoke. His voice was hoarse, and 
trembling with tender passion, as he said — 

“ Margaret ! ” 

For an instant she looked up ; and then sought to veil 
her luminous eyes by dropping her forehead on her hands. 
Again, stepping nearer, he besought her with another 
tremulous eager call upon her name. 

“ Margaret ! ” 

Still lower went the head : more closely hidden was the 
face, almost resting on the table before her. He came close 
to her. He knelt by her side, to bring his face to a level 
with her ear, and whispered — panted out the words — 

“ Take care. If you do not speak I shall claim you as 
my own in some strange presumptuous way. Send me 
away at once, if I must go. — Margaret ! — ” 

5i9 


North and South 

At that third call she turned her face, still covered with 
her small white hands, towards him, and laid it on his 
shoulder, hiding it even there ; and it was too delicious to 
feel her soft cheek against his for him to wish to see either 
deep blushes or loving eyes. He clasped her close. But 
they both kept silence. At length she murmured in a 
broken voice — 

“ Oh, Mr. Thornton, I am not good enough ! ” 

“Not good enough ! Don’t mock my own deep feeling 
of unworthiness.” 

After a minute or two; he gently disengaged her hands 
from her face, and laid her arms as they had once before 
been placed to protect him from the rioters. 

“Do you remember, love?” he murmured. “And how 
I requited you with my insolence the next day ? ” 

“ I remember how wrongly I spoke to you — that is all.” 

“ Look here ! Lift up your head. I have something to 
show you!” She slowly faced him, glowing with beautiful 
shame. 

“ Do you know these roses ? ” he said, drawing out his 
pocket-book, in which were treasured up some dead flowers. 

“ No ! ” she replied, with innocent curiosity. “ Did I 
give them to you ? ” 

“ No ! Vanity, you did not. You may have worn sister 
roses very probably.” 

She looked at them, wondering for a minute, then she 
smiled a little as she said — - 

“ They are from Helstone, are they not ? I know the 
deep indentations round the leaves. Oh, have you been 
there ? When were you there ? ” 

“ I wanted to see the place where Margaret grew to 
what she is, even at the worst time of all, when I had no 
hope of ever calling her mine. I went there on my return 
from Havre.” 

“ You must give them to me,” she said, trying to take 
them out of his hand with gentle violence. 

“ Very well. Only you must pay me for them ! ” 

520 


“ Pack Clouds away ” 

“ How shall I ever tell Aunt Shaw ? ” she whispered, / 
after some time of delicious silence. 

“ Let me speak to her.” 

“ Oh, no ! I owe it to her — but what will she say ? ” 

“ I can guess. Her first exclamation will be, 1 That 
man ! ’ ” 

“ Hush ! ” said Margaret, “ or I shall try and show you 
your mother’s indignant tones as she says, ‘ That woman ! * " 




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